


turning every second to solid gold

by Resamille



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Keith and Shiro are adopted brothers, M/M, Shiro (Voltron) is Missing, Some magic-related violence, Temporary Amnesia, Voltron but Not Quite, also some non-magic related violence, galra experiments, kidnappings, surprise surprise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-04-26 03:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14392878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resamille/pseuds/Resamille
Summary: It starts as a tension in the air. You feel the static of untapped potential, of layers of the world hidden to your sight but there. It crackles over your skin, a caress and a warning all at once. Anticipation thrums through your veins, and the universe echoes back, its own livewire heartbeat ringing in your ears.You breathe in. The scent of burnt sugar and stardust.You breathe out, and all is gone. Just a glimpse of what could be.Or: Keith never believed in magic, until Lance. Keith also never really believed in love. Until Lance.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Better Days by Hedley.
> 
> Shoutout to my [most amazing partner for the Klance Reverse Bang!](https://little-lucky-angel.tumblr.com/)! Thanks for putting up w. me yknow how it be

When he wakes, it's with a split lip and splitting headache. It's also in an alleyway, tucked into the corner made by a dumpster and the brick wall of some unknown building, his body crumpled on a pile of flattened cardboard boxes that smell distinctly of old garbage. He probably smells the same.

He reaches a hand up and claws wearily at the metal of the dumpster he's propped against. His lip throbs. His temples, too. His vision swims when his hand finally finds a hold and hoists him up. He ends up leaning heavily upon the brick, pressing his palms into the rough surface to ground him. He closes his eyes. In the distance: the sound of cars. His right ear is clogged.

He doesn't know his name.

Squinting up into the sunlight, he realizes it must be somewhere around noon—the sun is clearly above him, splaying it's harsh rays into the slender alleyway.

“Hey, Man, you good?”

He turns to face the voice. A large man—broad shoulders, well-fed, hands that look like they could crush him if the man wanted to but never would. One of those hands reaches out towards his shoulder, and he lets the man steady him.

“Uh,” he responds, mouth dry. His tongue is sandpaper on his lips. Chapped. Always chapped. That much, he knows. “Um.”

“Whoa, Buddy, go drinking last night or something? You look out of it.”

He feels his brow furrow. He swallows. “No, I don't... think so.”

“You don't think so?” The man chuckles. “Too much, maybe?”

“No—I...” He presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, straining. Muffles against his wrists: “I—don't remember anything.”

“Well... hey, I know how it is. How about I send you back home in a taxi?”

“No—you don't understand.” Anger replaces exhaustion as his hands fall away from his face and form fists at his side. Anger, at himself. “I don't know my name. I don't remember _anything_.”

“Shit—you mean like amnesia?”

“I... guess.”

“Do you remember anything at all?”

Head hurts. Throbbing. Static. “I think I have a brother. But I don't—we used to play in the mud outside our apartment complex when we were kids. He taught me how to carve sticks with a knife.”

“Okay... That's something!” the man praises. “But you don't know his name?”

He shakes his head, desolation beginning to set in.

“How... how about a phone? Did you check your pockets?”

Another head shake. He pats his jeans, checking his pockets: an Android in a worn case; a set of keys with a red lion charm attached; a crumpled receipt for some tech store.

“Phone's dead,” he announces to the man.

“Jesus. Well... How about we go buy a charger and I'll buy you something to eat while we wait for it to boot up?”

“You don't...”

“Nah, but it sounds like you're having a rough day. Name's Hunk by the way. And you're—wait, oh, oh right. Never mind. Sorry.”

Hunk reaches out his hand. It's warm against his own palm. Kind. “Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah. Uh, same.”

Hunk turns and starts walking down the alley. “You coming?”

Hurried footsteps. He finds that his limbs are not only tired, but sore as well. They ache from sleeping on the ground, but also from something else. His side, he realizes, aches with a different pain. A bruise, a memory.

“So, nothing, huh?” Hunk says after a few moments of leading the way out of the alley and down the sidewalk

“What?”

“That you remember.”

“Not... recent. I remember childhood events?”

“What about the name of your parents? That would help you find out who you are,” Hunk says hopefully.

He shakes his head. “I was adopted. I don't know if our names our the same.”

“Well, we should be able to check adoption records if all else fails, right?” Hunk offers.

“I suppose.”

“Oh—there's a gas station. I'll just go grab you a phone charger, okay? What phone do you have?”

“Uh...” He pulls it back out of his pocket and offers it to Hunk.

“Right. Well, that's a micro USB... I'll be right back, yeah?” Hunk passes back the phone.

He nods and stashes the—his—phone back in his pocket. While Hunk disappears into the corner store, he brushes his fingers over his ribs, feeling for the sore place. Pain lances up his side right above his waist, and he glances around for a moment before lifting his shirt—plain, black, useless—to look.

Bruised red-violet blooms across his skin, fresh. Was it from the night before? A hazy memory says he was kicked, but that doesn't really make any sense. What kind of bar fight would have opponents that were that coordinated? Maybe it was an accident.

“Whoa, what happened?” Hunk gasps out when he returns.

He shrugs. “Hell if I know.”

“Oh, damn—right. Sorry. Gonna have to get used to that.”

“Let's hope you _don't_ ,” he mumbles.

“Well, here's the charger! There's a coffee shop about a block further. They have sandwiches. Is that fine?”

His stomach growls at the thought of food. “Honestly? Anything.”

“Well, this is better than anything, I promise!” Hunk starts walking, and almost grudgingly his feet follow the man. “They make an amazing BLT—not better than me, of course, but still good. I always stop there when I don't have time to make food, which is... well, not often, but—”

“You cook?”

Hunk nods, seemingly unfazed by the interruption. “Yeah! Oh, man, maybe sometime I can make you something! Maybe garlic knots. Lance—that's my best friend—wants some garlic knots, so maybe...”

A thought, fleeting. His head throbs, a heartbeat. He's chasing a ghost, too transparent for his aim to lock on.

A glimpse: _Lance, Buddy, I think you_ might _have overdone it a bit!_

“You okay?”

He shakes himself back into reality. He realizes he'd stopped walking. “I... yeah. I'm good, I think.”

Hunk motions to a inconspicuous building nestled between a couple of stores. He holds the door open, and the trill of a bell announces their arrival. “So, BLT?” Hunk asks, stepping into the smell of coffee and sweetness. The coffee shop is littered with patrons. In the corner, someone gathers their things as they get up to leave.

“Whatever is fine.”

“I'll take that as an enthusiastic yes. See if you can snag a table near an outlet.”

“Right,” he says. He aims for the recently vacated corner table. The man previously there—brown hair, flannel over a white t-shirt, smirk oozing overconfidence with a hint of charm—brushes past. A simple cologne...

_Two bodies pressed close._

_He's demanding something, pressing the other into the brick wall. His arm is tucked under the man's chin, and he's acutely aware of how fragile the man's thin body seems under his hands. “You said it could do anything. Give it to me.”_

_“I can't,” the other says, “You already have it.”_

_He presses his body closer. His side throbs with fresh pain. The other smiles—overconfident, a hint of charm—and all goes black._

The sound of a bell. A ghost, fleeting, escaping. He collapses into the chair, breathing hard. What the fuck. What the actual fuck.

Hands shaking, he pries the charger out of its plastic binds and plugs it in. It takes three tries. On the last, he lets his phone drop on the table, and lets his head follow, squeezing his eyes shut as he lets the cool press of the table into his forehead ground him, if only a little.

“One BL... Are you _sure_ you're okay?”

“No,” he groans, without picking up his head.

“Shit, are you feeling well? Dizzy—that might be a concussion. Or if you're nauseous! Are you nauseous? Should I go ask for a bucket?”

He wearily pries his face off the table and pins Hunk with a tired stare. “Are you always like this?”

“Little bit, yeah. Okay, a lot like this.”

He sighs, and takes the offered plate and glass of water from Hunk's hands. “Thank you,” he says. It comes out softer—more genuine, but also like an admission.

“Of course, Man,” Hunk says, sitting across from him. “It's the least I could do.”

Before Hunk manages to finish speaking, the scent of food has him reaching for the sandwich and taking a huge bite. An appreciative noise rumbles out of his chest, satisfied and yet not at the same time—not yet. Meanwhile, Hunk lets out an alarmed squeak.

“What?” His words and mumbled around a mouth full of food and he reaches for the glass of water. He drains half of the glass. Partly to ease swallowing, and partly because he hadn't realized how parched he was until the cool liquid pooled on his tongue.

Hunk looks just a bit horrified. “You didn't wash your hands.”

A deadpan stare. He lifts his hands off his food, proceeds to wipe them on his equally filthy pants, and then resumes shoving food into his mouth.

He nearly chokes when the chime of his phone turning on draws his attention. With one hand, he reaches for the water, swallowing hard—he feels liquid dribbling down his chin, decides he doesn't care—and with the other he grips his phone with an anxiety that makes his stomach turn. As the logos fade and the lock screen boots up, he slams an empty glass onto the table with a choked-out, “ _Fuck_.”

“What?” Hunk leans closer. “What's wrong?”

“It's locked,” he mutters, deflating. “I don't remember the code.”

“Can I see?” Hunk says.

He shrugs, passes the phone over, continues eating with a bit less vigor.

“Oh! Hey, it's locked but I think it has your name on the lock screen. Does Keith sound familiar?”

He finds himself chewing thoughtfully, interrupted only by the bell announcing a new patron. Swallows. He forms the name with his lips, rounds his tongue around each letter. He tastes it—tastes—nothing.

He shrugs.

“KEITH!”

Instinctively, he whips his head towards the sound. There's a blur charging at him, and something in him panics, but it's too late—too late—

“You _asshole_ ,” screeches whatever it is—human, that's a human—that is clinging to his face, smooshing his face into their midsection. “I've been trying to find you all night. What the _hell_.”

Keith—apparently—pries his head out from the other's clutches. He squints up at them, brow furrowing more and more until it finally clicks into place like the last puzzle piece. “ _Pidge_?”

Pidge peers down at him. “What _happened_?”

Keith swallows. “I, uh... Don't remember. Blacked out or something. I guess I have amnesia.”

“Well, shit,” Pidge mutters. “Should I take you to a hospital?”

“It's probably only temporary!” Hunk interrupts in a rush. He looks a mixture of anxious and relieved as he backpedals. “I mean—it's the most common type of amnesia, after all. Just by chance, it's most likely—”

Pidge turns their scrutinizing gaze towards him. “I'm sorry—who exactly are you?”

“I'm Hunk!” the man supplies, a bit of cheer overpowering the sudden nerves in his voice. “I, uh, found Keith in an alley and bought him a phone charger and a BLT.”

“Do... you want me to pay you back?” Pidge asks carefully, noting Hunk's extreme detail.

“No, no! That's okay.”

“You... sure?” Keith says, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Really, it's fine! Random acts of kindness, right? Well, uh, now that you have your friend here, I think I'll take off. I don't think you need my help anymore!”

With that, Hunk extracts himself from his chair and hurries from the shop. Keith and Pidge stare after him until he disappears from view with the sound a bell.

“Well, that was wei—”

“Holy fucking shit, Keith,” Pidge suddenly turns to him, grabbing his cheeks in their hands and leaning down to eye level. Their words come out as a hiss between their teeth. “Please tell me you're joking about the amnesia shit.”

“Uh, no?”

“Oh, Jesus H. Christ.” Pidge leans back with a resigned sigh that travels through their entire body.

“Why?”

“Because you're never going to believe any of what I tell you even though you were there.”

Keith squints at them. “How do you...?”

“I was listening, remember?”

“No. I don't. That's the problem, here.”

Another resigned sigh, this time paired with an eyeroll. Pidge reaches up and threads their hand under Keith's hair on one side, while the other palm comes up to hold his head steady. The poke around his ear a bit and remove something. Suddenly, he can hear perfectly clear again.

Pidge holds up the small device. “Spy headset. I was listening to everything, at least until you went silent for a while. I figured the headpiece fell out, but then you didn't come back to your apartment and—I started kinda freaking out because I thought you'd been kidnapped, too, and so I spent all morning looking for you, though now that I think about it I probably could have traced the location of the headset, but then if it _had_ fallen out, then that would have been useless, and—”

“Wait, wait,” Keith interrupts, overwhelmed. “Back up. Kidnapped? What?”

Pidge sucks in a breath between their teeth. “Oh,” they say on the exhale. “Oh.”

“What's going on?”

“You don't—Shiro, you remember Shiro, right? Your brother...”

“Shiro? I...”

Mud-stained skin, wood shavings. Bright smile, warm hugs. Shiro. Shiro.

Something stabs into Keith's heart, a recent but deep-rooted anguish.

Shiro is—

“...is missing.”

 

“Okay, okay,” Keith says, trying very hard not to lose his shit. “This. This is crazy.”

“Right—crazy even for you, but—but—look, listen.” Pidge clicks a couple of times on their laptop and a clip of the audio recording from the night before starts up for approximately the fifth time.

Keith's voice: _“Who are you? What did you do with him?”_

The sounds of a struggle, shuffling—a thud and Keith's resulting noise of pain. His side throbs sympathetically, body remembering.

Someone cries out. After listening to the audio a few times, Keith and Pidge have decided it's not him making the sound.

Another voice, a stranger, simple cologne and confidence: _“Back off, Haxus. Leave him alone_. _”_

_“Or what? Last time, Sendak had you begging—”_

_“Daddy's not here right now,”_ the stranger's voice snaps. _“Leave or you'll be the one begging for mercy.”_

Another cry, and then the stranger hisses out, _“Run! No, not towards him—holy shit, okay.”_

A noise that sounds distinctly like choking.

 _“Gotta do everything myself around here_. _”_

Coughing, and then, wheezed out in Keith's voice: _“What the hell? How did you do that? Is he dead?”_

_“I wish. They don't go down very easily.”_

_“What the fuck is going on?”_

_“Cool, huh? Magic.”_

_“...I'm dreaming.”_

_“Nope.”_ The stranger pops the 'p' on the word, too-cheerful to be blowing Keith's mind. _“Real magic. Can do just about anything.”_

_“...okay, humor me, what's happening? Who is he?”_

_“You ask a lot of questions considering I just saved your life.”_

_“I had it covered.”_

_“Uh-huh. Looked like you had everything under control.”_

_“Look, I'm just trying to find someone, so if you're not going to be helpful, I'll just—what the fuck,_ let go of me _.”_

_“Can't let you do that, Buddy—fuck—”_

_“I told you,”_ Keith's voice snarls out. _“Either you're telling me what's going on or I'm leaving.”_

_“I can't let you leave yet.”_

_“So then start talking.”_

A sigh. _“You're not going to remember anyway... That guy? He was one of the Galra. They keep taking people to experiment on, trying to use their magic.”_

_“What's this magic bullshit?”_

_“Uh... magic? I don't think it gets more self-explanatory than that.”_

On the recording, Keith lets out a low noise like a growl. _“You said it could do anything. Give it to me.”_

_“I can't. You already have it.”_

There's a faint noise, and then the audio cuts with a tap of Pidge's finger.

Keith stares at a nonspecific spot on the wall of his bedroom, which has gradually devolved into some sort of conspiracy hub.

Pidge had already caught Keith up on the details they knew: Shiro's been missing for about two months now, and Keith had enlisted Pidge in helping him find Shiro. After about a month and a half of careful investigation, they started to realize there was a disproportion amount of kidnappings happening in the city recently, going back for about two years, but with increased activity recently, starting with Shiro's disappearance.

Two weeks later and they'd carefully crafted a plan to use Keith as bait to gather information.

But this encounter changes everything.

“Okay,” Keith says again. “Uh... play the other one?”

Pidge silently complies.

_“How long has he been out?”_

“I'm still pretty sure that's Hunk's voice,” Pidge interrupts.

“Shh,” Keith hisses out.

_“Like... an hour? I feel kinda bad just leaving him here.”_

“That's _definitely_ the same guy from earlier,” Pidge notes. “Voice patterns are the same.”

Keith glares at them.

 _“Oh God... How hard did you_ hit _him?”_

 _“I don't know! He was asking a lot of questions and—oh, yeah, also_ choking me _!”_

 _“Lance, Buddy, I think you_ might _have overdone it a bit!”_

_“Look, we'll just... I dunno. What's the worst that can happen?”_

_“A lot of things! He could remember everything—”_

_“—yeah, that's not happening—”_

_“—he could remember nothing! Like nothing at all! Or he might never wake up!”_

_“I probably... didn't get him that hard.”_

_“We're supposed to help civilians, not make things harder for them!”_

_“Right, okay. Look, uh... Okay! I have a plan... Stop it, I promise this will work. Come on.”_

Pidge cuts the audio.

“So let's presume Hunk is involved,” Pidge says. Keith makes an annoyed noise. “That means one of those guys is Hunk. The other is... Lance, right? Right. So we have names. Not enough to track them down, though... You didn't get any info out of Hunk, right?”

“Other than the fact he likes to cook and talks a lot about BLTs? No, not really... Wait, come to think of it, I think he did mention someone named Lance.”

Pidge pins him with a dead stare. “Your memory? Most inconvenient shit ever. We could have confirmed that was Hunk a long time ago.”

Keith snorts. “Well I'm _sorry_ I had amnesia.”

“Not for yesterday!”

“Anyway,” Keith says, mostly just for the sake of arguing. “That doesn't confirm that's Hunk in the recording.”

Pidge looks at him incredulously.

“It could...” Keith starts, withering under Pidge's harsh expression. “...be a coincidence.”

Pidge doesn't even bother to respond beyond an annoyed shake of their head.

“Right,” Keith says. “So Hunk and Lance. And that coffee shop.”

“We could stake it out,” Pidge suggests.

“Might work,” Keith allows. “But Hunk said he didn't actually go there that often.”

“What about Lance?”

“How would I know?”

“Do you remember what the guy looks like, at least?”

Keith bites his lip. “...Skinny.”

“Wow,” Pidge says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Don't go writing poetry about him now.”

“Amnesia!” Keith argues weakly. “Also, it was dark. I'm not sure if I'd be able to give the best description even if I didn't have my memory wiped.”

For a beat, there's silence.

Then, Pidge, in a very awed, quietly reverent tone, says: “This is some real Men In Black shit, isn't it?”

Keith buries his face in his hands wearily. “I never thought I'd say this, but right now I really hope there aren't any aliens.”

Pidge barks out an incredulous laugh. “This is crazy.”

“We don't know how to get answers, either,” Keith mumbles between his fingers.

“Not... entirely,” Pidge says after a moment. “We know they're supposed to be helping people, right?”

Keith looks up at them. “Yeah?”

“What if we stage another kidnapping?”

Keith blinks twice. “You're serious? How do we know they'd go for me again?”

“No,” says Pidge. “You kidnap me.”

It could work. Keith bites his lip. “Yeah, okay.”

Pidge hums. “We need some way of capturing whoever comes to save me. Some way to get them to talk without wiping our memories. Wow, that's a sentence I'd never thought I'd say with complete sincerity.”

“Crazy,” Keith mumbles. “...I think they need their hands to do things? I think I remember things happening when they moved their hands.”

“Well, that's a start,” Pidge says. “Maybe I should dig a bit into this, first. See if there's any information. I'll ask Matt if he can find anything.”

“How's he doing?” Keith asks quietly.

“He's... better. Considering he didn't go manic about tracking down Shiro, I think he's coping rather well. Probably better than you are, really.”

“Thanks, Pidge. Real vote of confidence.”

“Sorry, but... yeah.” They close their laptop, looking thoughtfully off the side for a moment. “He's getting better.”

“Good,” Keith says, and then leaves it at that. Because he doesn't have anything else to say. Because anything he could, Pidge has already heard. Pidge, who's been caught between the fallout of Shiro's disappearance not only from Keith, but also from her brother, not to mention her own relationship with him.

So many ties, so many hearts Shiro had touched, severed.

Keith's going to get him back.

“Right,” Keith says, determined. “Let's do this.”

 

A tension sings in the air, glancing off Keith's skin, raising the hair on his arms and nape in reaction. Unanswered questions hang in the breeze. The air smells of unstruck lightning, of ozone and electricity.

He's not in the same alley that Keith woke up in a few days before, but he's close, a few blocks over. He and Pidge have both been carefully watching the news for missing persons reports, and no new ones have cropped up. They don't know the kidnappers' schedules, but they figure that it's not out of the question for another attempt this soon.

So in theory, this could work.

Pidge is down the block somewhere, walking seemingly innocently towards the alleyway Keith is waiting in. He's crouched in some dark corner, waiting for Pidge to pass by so he can pretend to grab them. They've planned this carefully. Pidge is wearing headphones, which, to an outside observer, would make them look like an easy target, but is actually allowing them to be in constant communication with Keith.

They've scripted this.

Just: Pidge walks around the corner into the alleyway.

Keith takes a deep breath, grounds himself.

Then: as Pidge passes, Keith lunges for them. They let out a carefully spoken, intentionally cut-off cry for help, just as planned.

Next: they struggle against Keith, pushing at him without putting any weight behind their hits. Keith pretends to have difficulty subduing them.

Unscripted: Pidge hits the bruise still lingering under Keith's ribs. A hissed, “ _Ow._ ”

Pidge whispers back an apology.

Scripted, in theory, but unsure: “ _Let them go_.”

Keith whirls immediately, turning towards the voice. The suddenness of his movement catches the stranger off guard, and before he can lift a hand to do whatever kinda “magic” he did before, Keith has both of his wrists pulled taut behind his back.

“What the fu—”

Pidge hurries over, looping a rope from their backpack around the man's arms. Instinctively, the man tugs at the ropes to try and free himself. Keith keeps one hand over his hands, so he can feel if he starts doing any weird shit.

“Lance, I'm guessing?” Pidge says, peering up at him.

“The fuck is going on.”

Keith moves to the side, so he can watch Lance's expressions.

Lance's gaze flicks over to him once and then curdles into a sneer. “You're that guy.”

Keith stares at him. “Pidge,” he says without taking his eyes off Lance. “Watch his hands.”

“Got it.”

“Pull any shit,” Keith hisses out. “And I will break your fingers one by one.”

Lance looks at him incredulously. “I'd like to see you _try_.”

Keith feels one of Lance's hands twitch. Instantly, he moves to grab one of Lance's fingers, bending it backwards over his hand. He watches as Lance winces in pain, and then lets out a yelp of sound.

“You gonna cooperate?”

Lance wheezes out a noise. It might be a choked “fine.”

Keith will take it. He releases the pressure on Lance's finger. He doesn't move his hand.

“What do you want?” Lance says. Keith thinks he might have meant it to sound angry but it comes out more breathless than Lance probably expects. Or maybe not—judging by Lance's immediate cringe after he speaks.

Keith opens his mouth to respond, but it's Pidge who gets there first.

“Are you actually magic?”

Lance cranes his head over his shoulder to look at them. Some of the tension eases from his shoulders. Resigned, he lets out a sigh. “ _I'm_ not anything,” he says. “Not any more magic than anyone else.”

“What does that mean?”

“Everyone has it, but they don't know how to tap into it.”

“And how did you...?”

“I was trained.”

“By the Galra?” Keith asks.

Lance snorts, turning to him. “As if.”

Keith glares at him. “Keep talking.”

Lance's upper lip curls back into a sneer, but he continues. “The Galra pervert the idea of Altean magic. They want to abuse it. It's why they keep taking people. We're trying to stop them.”

Keith leans closer. “So you know where they've taken the people going missing?”

“I didn't say that. I said we were trying to _stop_ them from doing it.”

Keith's hand tightens over Lance's. “And what if I don't believe you?”

Lance's chin juts up at him, defiant. “Doesn't matter,” he says, clipped, and then all the air rushes out of Keith's lungs.

Pain blossoms across his shoulder, and it takes a moment for Keith to comprehend what happened. He's been shoved against the alley wall, thrown by some force.

“Sorry!”

Hunk.

Pidge lets out a cry, and Keith watches as the rope around Lance's arms falls away with no more fanfare than a few yellow sparks.

Nonono, they were so close.

Pidge stands statue still a little ways off, fear growing in their eyes. Keith tries to go to them and finds his limbs stuck to the brick.

Both Hunk and Lance are before them, arms raised and hands twisted into what looks like jagged, impossible shapes. Sparks occasionally fly off of their fingers. Keith's heart sinks into his stomach. He feels like he's going to be sick.

“I'll take the one with a mullet,” Lance grumbles out.

Words choke in Keith's throat, fighting for escape. Protests, insults, pleads; trapped.

“Lance, last time you wiped him you gave him legitimate amnesia.”

“Yeah? Maybe he deserves it.”

“Lance!” Hunk looks scandalized.

“He tied me up.”

Keith struggles against his invisible bonds. There are strings, tied between him and Hunk's hands. He doesn't know how he knows this, but he does. He searches—looking for—for—there must be a way. Nothing, nothing... Until:

“We... just want answers...” his voice croaks out. He's not sure if he found what he was looking for, but the words; freed. He needs to do this. He has to fight. For Shiro. Anger pulses through him, righteous.

Hunk's eyes go wide. Lance glares at him. “You're slipping.”

“Well sorry this isn't my forte!” Hunk fires back. “I'll do Keith.”

Lance snickers.

“Lance, _please_.” Hunk sighs, shaking his head as he approaches Keith.

“You said it,” Lance says, walking towards Pidge. “Not me.”

A single crack. The strings—one, in particular—beginning to unravel. Keith latches onto it with something tucked away beneath his ribs and pulls.

“Wait!”

Hunk freezes.

“Get on it, Hunk!” Lance orders.

“I—I swear—” Hunk stammers out. “That wasn't—”

“We're just looking for someone,” Keith says in a rush. There's a pleading note to his tone.

“So you're saying he just broke out of it on his own?” Lance snaps. He's standing in front of Pidge, but hasn't moved to do anything different yet.

“ _Please_ ,” Keith gasps out. Somehow, his hand latches onto Hunk's wrist, desperate.

Hunk lets out a yelp. “Yes! Yes he did—holy shit! Lance he got me!”

Lance's eyes go wide. He looks conflicted for a moment before doing something with one of his hands that makes Keith's hand detach from Hunk and slam into the wall.

“ _Fuck you_ ,” spits Pidge immediately, apparently able to speak now that Lance's attention is split between both of them.

“I'm—” Keith chokes, forces the words past his lips. “Look—T-Tak—”

The string pulls taut, a direct line between him and Hunk. Another, between him and Lance. He tugs at them both, strains and fights and forces, and then: _snap_.

With a deep breath, Keith steps away from the wall.

Hunk backs away, looking panicked. “Laaaa—”

“I'm looking for Takashi Shirogane,” Keith says quietly, deadly low. Fury simmers in his blood, just under his skin. It levels his voice, turns him cold, all the warmth burned into anger. “He was taken by the Galra. You are the only hope I have of finding him.”

“We don't mean to cause trouble,” Pidge adds weakly.

“All I want—” Keith chokes, but this time, instead of magic, it's because of the sob caught in his throat. “All I want is to find my brother. Please.”

Hunk glances over at Lance. His eyes are still wide, but he doesn't look like he's going to hyperventilate still.

“No, Hunk,” Lance deadpans. “No.”

“But—”

“Hunk, we're not supposed to.”

“He's a natural,” Hunk protests. “Allura would love to meet him.”

“We're supposed to—oh, fuck it, _fine_. If only so Allura can say they're unworthy and then we can toss 'em back, and then _I'm_ wiping him.”

Lance and Hunk drops their arms to their sides. Pidge immediately skitters towards Keith.

“Sorry,” Hunk says. “Protocol is we wipe your memory of any encounter with magic.”

“But we've _apparently_ decided _not_ to do that,” Lance gripes.

“Yes,” says Hunk.

“Who's Allura?” Keith demands.

“She's the person who taught us how to use our magic,” Hunk explains colloquially, as if he wasn't restraining Keith a few moments ago. “We can you take you to her, and she... can explain everything better.”

Keith steps forward, instinctively putting himself between Pidge and the others. “Right now?”

Hunk's brow furrows. “I mean, we could... but it's like midnight? She's probably asleep.”

“Mistake,” Lance grumbles. Keith isn't sure if he's talking about going to Allura _right now_ or going to Allura at all. Both, maybe.

“Ignore him,” Hunk says. “He's sulking because you tied him up.”

“Shut up, Hunk.”

“He doesn't like it when people get the best of him,” Hunk continues.

“Sorry,” Pidge says quietly. “We didn't think you'd exactly cooperate on your own, and we didn't know how to find you.”

“Anyway,” Hunk says. “Meet us at... Well, you know that coffee shop we went to? Meet us there at... uh, noon, tomorrow?”

“How do we know you'll actually show up?” Keith asks.

Hunk sticks out his hand. Pidge jumps away from it.

“Sorry,” Hunk says. “Give me your phone.”

Keith stares at him. He sighs. “I'm not going to _take it_. I'm gonna give you my number.”

Keith digs his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, and passes it over. Hunk taps on the screen a bit before handing it back.

“Is this number real?” Keith asks.

Hunk looks at him incredulously. “Call it.”

Keith presses the call button. The chime of a phone ringtone sounds in the air. Hunk reaches into his pocket and fiddles with something until the noise cuts off.

“You... guys have phones?” Pidge says dubiously.

Lance scoffs. “Just because we use magic doesn't mean we've been living in caves or something.”

“Magic doesn't replace society,” Hunk says. “It just adds another layer to it.”

“We done?” Lance quips. “I need my beauty sleep.”

Keith peers at him. “I think that's going to take more hours than there are in the day.”

Lance splutters and glares. “Hunk! Let's go! I will not be insulted by someone with hair as bad as his!”

“Tomorrow,” Hunk says pointedly. “Noon. Got it?”

Lance begins moving his hands. Keith's muscle tense, ready to fight back if Lance decides to do something, but instead he turns away from them. On the opposite wall of the alleyway, a shape begins to shimmer on the brick. The wall ripples, like Keith's looking through heat waves, and then Lance just... steps into it. And he's gone.

“Holy fucking shit,” Pidge breathes.

“Lance!” Hunk hisses. “Lance, don't leave me!” Hunk scurries after him, disappearing right into the wall after Lance.

“Did that just happen?” Keith asks with a dead tone.

“Which part?”

Keith groans, and slumps against the alley wall. “All of it.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !! THERE'S ART FOR THIS CHAPTER !!
> 
> link at the end to avoid spoilers uwu

Keith holds his tongue as Hunk and Lance pick him and Pidge up from the coffee shop. He holds his tongue as Lance orders an overly complicated latte and Hunk judges the quality of their cake pops. He stays quiet as a damn mouse as Hunk and Lance lead them out of the shop and into the warmth of the spring day, waltzing down the street as if—as if—

As if they're completely normal people.

As if they're friends, stopping to get coffee before heading to the park for a walk or back to someone's apartment to watch movies or—

Keith doesn't get it. He should. But he doesn't.

But when they stop in front of the imposing doors of a law firm, _Altea & Partners _slapped across the glass in white script _,_ Keith's had enough.

“Why are we here?” he snaps as Hunk reaches to pull the door open.

Hunk quirks a confused eyebrow at Keith. “To see Allura? Didn't we say that?”

“And she's _here_?” Keith scoffs.

“Well... why wouldn't she be?” Hunk asks. He drops his hand to check his phone. “It is noon. I suppose she could be out to lunch.”

“Allura is a _lawyer_?” Pidge asks incredulously.

“Duh,” Lance says. “We're standing in front of a law firm. What do you think she does?”

“Train cocky magical shitheads with dumb coffee orders,” Keith mutters.

Lance splutters. “Excuse—”

“That's just a hobby,” Hunk interrupts Lance's impending indignant rant. “And to be fair, she didn't know about Lance's coffee problem until _after_ she'd agreed to work with him.”

“Hunk!” Lance squawks, but Hunk already opened the door and let himself into the building.

Pidge glances over at Keith, shrugs, and then follows Hunk.

Lance sticks his tongue out childishly at Keith before disappearing into the building.

With a sigh, Keith follows.

This is absolutely ridiculous.

Inside, the waiting area is tastefully decorated in minimalist colors with pops of green in the form of live plants. The occasional flower adds bits of orange or pink or red, accented by elegant white columns on either side of the entryway. Hunk approaches the receptionist tucked behind a curved desk at the far end of the room without a hint of hesitation.

“Hi, Shay!” Hunk chirps.

“Hunk!” Shay, apparently, responds, equally cheerful. Her curly hair is pulled back into a large bun, but a few stray locks slip out to frame her dark skin. “How are you?”

“Hey, Gorgeous,” Lance purrs as he slides up next to Hunk. “Come here often?”

Shay gives Lance a dead expression before turning back to Hunk with a faint smile. “Remind me,” she says, voice dripping with sweetness. “Why you're friends with him?”

Lance clutches at his chest, mock wounded. “Shay—Shay, my love, light of life, my darling, how could—”

Hunk forcefully claps his hand over Lance's mouth. “Unfortunate circumstance,” he tells Shay solemnly. “Childhood friends, neighbors, and all that.”

Lance makes a wounded noise from between Hunk's fingers.

Shay nods slowly. “Dreadful,” she says. She breaks into snickers.

Lance pries Hunk's hand off. “Why is everyone picking on me today?”

“Easy target,” Pidge supplies.

Lance points an accusatory finger at her. “You. Zip it.” He plops down onto one of the couches, apparently sulking.

“And who are these two?” Shay asks curiously, glancing Keith and Pidge over in turn.

“We're taking them to meet Allura,” Hunk says.

“She's in her office. Better catch her before she steps out for lunch. I think she's meeting Lotor today.”

“Got it. Thanks, Shay!”

Hunk moves past the receptionist desk and towards the elevators. Pidge and Keith follow close behind.

“Just fuck already!” Lance calls after him.

“Lance!” Hunk squawks, scandalized.

Shay just looks pointedly at Lance and smirks.

Lance lets out a noise that sounds like a wild bird mating call. He tries to scramble up off the couch but stumbles, and by then the elevator is already there and Keith, Pidge, and Hunk are headed up into the building.

The elevator dumps them three floors up, and Hunk leads them to the end of the hall. The door is open, offering a view of a large desk, at which a young woman is sitting.

At least, she _looks_ young. Her brown skin is flawless, makeup simple but pretty, the pink of her eyeshadow accenting the deep of her eyes, but her hair is stark white. She has it pulled back into a ponytail, spilling over her shoulder like long strokes of a paintbrush.

“Hunk,” the woman greets. “How can I help you?”

“Do you have time to talk to a couple of possible students?” Hunk asks. “We, uh—well, Lance and I had a bit of run-in, and we promised we'd take them to you to explain everything. Also, Lance calls dibs on clearing Keith's memory if you decide not to.”

“What?” Keith deadpans.

The woman snorts and stands from her chair. “Didn't Lance muck it up the last time and put us in this mess?”

Hunk nods. “You know him.”

She sighs. “Unfortunately,” she says, but it's fond. “Let me talk to them alone. Could you close the door, Hunk?”

“Sure!” Hunk says, and slips from the room, letting the office door close gently behind him.

Pidge looks the woman over warily. “You're not gonna kill us, are you?”

Her eyes widen. “Heavens, no! What did Lance tell you about me?”

Keith stares at her for a moment, and then breaks into shaky laughter. “Nothing,” he chokes out. “No, we just—”

“It's been a crazy couple of days,” Pidge says, but they're grinning.

“I see. Oh! Forgive me—my name is Allura.”

Allura walks around her desk and sticks her hand out. Pidge only hesitates a moment before taking it. “I'm Pidge.”

“Keith.” Allura turns to him, and they shake hands before Allura returns to her desk.

She gestures for them to sit, and Keith and Pidge comply.

“So,” Allura says, leaning her arms on her desk. “Hunk said you wanted to learn from me?”

“Well, actually,” Pidge starts. “We...”

“We have no idea what's going on,” Keith blurts.

“Yeah, basically,” Pidge picks up from there. “They tried to wipe Keith's memory, but we got it back, and then we might have... laid a trap for Lance and Hunk. And then we kinda argued and this weird thing happened where they kept us still, but Keith broke out of it.”

Allura's expression stays passive as she listens. “You broke out of it?” she asks, when Pidge is done with their word vomit.

“Uh, yeah,” Keith admits. “I don't know how.”

Allura nods, slowly. “Do you know how you got past the memory block?”

“That was me, I suppose,” Pidge says. “We were communicating through an earpiece and I recorded everything he heard. I helped him remember.”

Allura's brow furrows. “While I understand how... I can't help but wonder why?”

“We, um—” Pidge breaks off, looking uncertainly at Keith.

“We were looking for someone,” Keith says softly. “He was kidnapped. I was bait.”

Allura sucks in a measured breath. “I am sorry,” she says.

“Which is why we're here,” Keith continues, voice growing in strength. “I want to find him. Hunk said you could help.”

“Is that why you want to learn how to use your magic?”

“Yes,” Keith breathes. “I have to find Shiro. _Please_.”

Allura turns to Pidge. “And you?”

Pidge peers at Allura through their glasses. “I am a scientist,” they announce finally. “If there is something in the world I don't yet know, then it's my job to learn.”

Allura lets out a small snort of laughter. “You sound like my father.”

There's the sound of something vibrating against a surface, and Allura reaches for the phone ringing on her desk. Glancing at the screen, she lets out a panicked noise. “Shit! I'm late—” She turns back to Keith and Pidge. “Come back tomorrow around three in the afternoon. We'll start then. In the meantime, Pidge, you should ask Hunk about his research. I think you'll find it interesting.”

 

“You seem excited,” Keith observes.

And that's the start. He really shouldn't have asked.

The entire walk to _Altea & Partners_ is filled with Pidge's happy chatter about Hunk's research. Something about imbuing items with magic of their own, even though they aren't alive. There are supposedly some metaphysical limitation that prevents this from happening, but Pidge swears, after at max an hour of lingering around Hunk's work, that it should be possible.

Keith understands exactly none of it.

As soon as they're in the building, Shay catches them and whisks them through a hallway, down a set of stairs, and into a large room.

“Alright,” Allura says, as soon as she spots them. “Next time, wear looser clothes.” She points at Keith's jeans. “Those won't do.”

“These fine?” Pidge asks, picking at the hem of their shorts.

“They'll work,” Allura allows. She herself is dressed in black workout shorts and a loose long-sleeved shirt. “Later, when you better know how to feel the flow of your magic, the clothes won't matter. But right now the extra sensation may distract you.

“We're going to start simple,” Allura continues. She holds her hand up and snaps. The air around her fingers spark, like the friction of metal hitting metal. “Using magic requires a deep knowledge of self. Do either of you meditate? Yoga?”

Pidge and Keith both shake their heads.

Allura nods after a moment. “Close your eyes, both of you.”

Keith glances over at Pidge, and then complies.

“Focus on your breathing. Listen to it. Breathe in on four counts, breath out on four.”

Inhale. One, two, three, four. Exhale. One, two, three, four.

Inhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Exhale. One. Two. Three. Four.

Keith starts when he feels Allura's hand slip into his. He almost jerks away, but her palm is strong against his, keeping him in place. He feels something like a heartbeat pass through her fingers, jolting through his muscles.

“That,” Allura says softly. “Is what magic feels like.”

Inhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Pulse.

Exhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Pulse.

“Keep the beat,” Allura instructs. “Imagine the magic flowing through you. Let it flow through your hand. On the split second your hold your breath, I want you to snap. Let the magic build there, and then—release.”

Inhale.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Pulse.

Snap.

Keith's eyes flick open to see if anything happened.

In the corner of his eyes—there it is, a small spark, weak but present, as it dies against his thumb.

But that's not what he _sees_.

Instead, for that one, single heartbeat: he sees the world reveal itself to him. He sees the threads of magic as they weave realities together, sees the strings connecting Allura to this place, sees her love for it, her home. He sees the first few strings attach themselves to Pidge, where they wrap around their wrist on the arm Allura is holding. He sees them tangle around his body, winding around his free right arm, where a single string waves, untethered, from the tip of his finger.

And then it snaps back into place, and with it, everything else.

“I did it,” Keith breathes quietly.

“Good,” Allura says. “But you opened your eyes. Do not be so expectant of results, or you'll soil your progress.”

Keith nods slowly. Allura turns to Pidge. “You didn't snap?”

“Well,” Pidge says, raising their right arm, which Allura is still holding onto. “You see, I can only snap with my right hand.”

Allura's eyes widen, and then she laughs.

“Lesson one of magic,” she says as she recovers, going to Pidge's other side. “Sometimes we must first consider the mundane before we can accomplish the extraordinary.”

And that is how it begins.

 

Allura doesn't let them catch a break. When it's not her working with them, it's Hunk or Lance. Once, Shay. But there's always something new to learn, always something to  _do_.

Keith loves it. He's finally getting somewhere, finally has a lead, finally doing something.

Finally on his way to getting Shiro back.

 

Two weeks later, Keith enters Allura's office at her request. She's sitting at her desk when he walks through the door and closes it gently behind him. Allura doesn't look up when she hears him enter, continuing to look at the papers on her desk.

“Keith,” she greets, short but not unkind. “How's training?”

Keith hesitates, but then Allura looks up at him expectantly from her work, and her gaze stays on him.

“Uh, good. It's great.”

“Lance tells me you beat him in a spar.”

Keith clears his throat. “Yeah.”

“Good job.”

“Thanks...?”

Allura leans back in her chair, regarding him. “I want you to explain magic to me. As you see it.”

Keith feels his brow furrow. “What?”

“How do you do it? Walk me through it. Metaphors usually help.”

“Um,” Keith says. He tries to think about how he casts. At this point it's starting to blend together with all other reflexive action in his life. Like deciding to walk forward—he doesn't think about every step along the way.

But that first time—when he's stopped Lance's magic from working on him. And in training, the first day, now that he thinks about it.

“Everyone's connected,” he finally says. “There's... strings. They tie everyone together, and when you touch the strings or tie them together or pull on them, you do magic.”

Allura looks thoughtful for a moment. Then: “I'm going to suspend your training.”

Panic lashes through Keith. Was there a _wrong_ answer? “What?” he squawks. “No, you can't—”

He's not ready. He needs more before he's strong enough to find Shiro. He needs—

“I wasn't done,” Allura says sharply. “I am suspending your training because you need to learn to use _your_ magic. Not that of others. Instead, you're going to be observing Lance.”

“Great,” Keith mutters, because Lance is absolute his favorite fucking person. “Why?”

“Because Lance is an experienced magic-user. He knows how to cast from his heart. Go find him. I've already instructed him on how to work with you and what to focus on. In the meantime, you're not allowed to cast unless Lance lets you.”

Keith stares at her. “You're kidding.”

Allura stares right back. “Is there a problem?”

Keith presses his lips together for a moment.

“No,” he finally grits out.

Allura waves a hand at him, dismissive, and turns back to her work. “Good.”

Keith lets himself out of Allura's office. Outside, Lance is waiting, an infuriatingly smug smirk across his face.

Great. Just great. Keith is fucked.

 

Keith meets Lance on an arbitrary road. It's an address that Lance texted him the day before with little fanfare beyond _hit me up if u get lost_ tacked on afterward.

He's sitting on the curb in front of an unassuming apartment building when Keith walks up. He stands as Keith approaches. Aptly, he's humming _Magic._  Keith is equally amused as he as infuriated.

“Really?” he says instead of greeting, and Lance's tune stutters out.

“Don't diss B.o.B. Or Pitch Perfect 2.” He motions for Keith to follow him into the building.

Keith scowls as Lance punches in a code on the main entrance, starts leading him up stairs. “The third one sucked.”

Lance pauses, turning, spluttering, to look at Keith. “You've seen Pitch Perfect?”

“Yeah,” Keith says warily, nudging at Lance's shoulder to get him walking again. “Why?”

“Wouldn't have pegged it as your sort of movie.”

“What did you think my type of movie is?”

“I dunno,” Lance says, shrugging. “Obscure action plots, maybe.”

Keith contemplates that, humming. “I suppose you're not wrong.”

“So why...”

“I'm pretty sure Shiro had a crush on Anna Kendrick. Or Ben Platt. Or both.”

Lance laughs, leading him from the stairwell into a hallway—fourth floor, Keith notices. “Shiro sounds like a man after my own heart.”

Keith feels his heart sink a little. “He would have gotten along with you a lot better than I do, I think. He gets along well with everyone.”

“Good,” Lance says, opening a door to one of the apartments.

“Good,” Keith echoes dubiously.

“We'll work with that.” He directs Keith towards a plain but surprisingly tidy couch in the living room. “Sit.”

Keith considers disobeying, but Allura ordered him to listen to Lance, so... He sits. “If this is some Karate Kid bullshit, I'm out. I'm not cleaning your windows under the guise of training.”

Lance hums. He flops down next to Keith and leans over him to reach the TV remote on the coffee table. Keith can smell his shampoo—coconut, maybe.

“That would have been a good idea,” Lance admits, leaning back. “But no. We're going to watch anime.”

Keith stares at him. “What the fuck, Lance. People are missing. Shiro—”

“I'm well aware,” Lance says softly, seriously. “You wanna learn magic. Step one is understanding you can't fix everything.”

“But this—”

“ _This_ is part of your training. So shut up and pay attention.”

So they watch Sailor Moon.

It's an arbitrary episode. Keith stays dutifully, if not angrily, quiet throughout.

When it's over, Lance glances over at him, calculating. His expression seems to be judging Keith with an expectant, _so_?

But Keith stays silent. He looks pointedly back at Lance. He wants to stubbornly convey that this is absolutely useless, but Lance told him to shut up and sit down, so that's what he's going to do. He can feel his jaw working, teeth grinding harshly in the back of his mouth.

Lance sighs. He turns to the TV. Starts playing an episode of Shugo Chara.

“You're not paying attention,” he says.

Keith stares at the screen. Colors flash—there's always some transformation sequence. Something about magic and girl power and this is so, so stupid.

This time, when the episode ends and Lance looks over at him, Keith grumbles: “So are you trying to tell me I have to dress up in a skirt and dance around in order to unlock my full potential?”

Lance snorts. “You're lucky I'm an honest guy,” he says, “Because I'm so tempted to say yes.”

“Fuck you,” Keith bites out.

“We'll try one more,” Lance announces, and starts playing something else... Keith doesn't catch the name; Lance doesn't bother to tell him.

Does it matter when it's all the same thing?

Keith lets out a pained noise. “You're shitting me.”

“There's a point,” Lance insists. “You'll get it.”

“Just _tell_ me _._ ”

“Takes the fun out of it,” Lance retorts. “Besides, it's a bit of a mental exercise.”

So Keith suffers through an episode of whatever this is too. It's the same plot as the others—something about friendship and magic and everyone nearly dies, or maybe they actually do, before the main character revives everyone with the power of Anime Bullshit, and things are good and happy again.

If Lance is trying to tell Keith that life with magic is all glitter and rainbows, then Keith's experience has been a poor sample of reality.

“Still nothing?” Lance asks when it's over. He sighs. “Oh, well.”

Keith sinks down into the couch. “I don't know why the hell you think this is helpful. It's wasting time.” An hour and twenty minutes since he's met up with Lance, and he's learned nothing.

“Have you read A Wrinkle in Time?” Lance asks suddenly.

Keith turns to pin Lance with a deadened stare.

Lance looks vaguely affronted. “What kind of sad childhood,” he mutters, but he picks himself up off the couch and walks to a bookcase tucked in the corner of the room. He draws out a book, flips through until he's close to the end of the book, then flips back a couple.

Keith hears the front door open. “I'm back, Lance,” comes Hunk's voice. “Oh, hey, Keith—”

Lance holds up a single finger, and Hunk falls into silence, as if he's experienced with Lance's dramatic readings.

“ _Father said it was all right for me to be afraid_...” Lance begins, and continues reading. Keith tries to follow—something about a girl, he thinks, who's trying to save her brother from something called IT. A battle of wits, or something of that nature, as the brother and she argue—

“ _'Mrs. Whatsit hates you,' Charles Wallace said_ ,” Lance reads. “ _And that was where IT made Its fatal mistake, for Meg said, automatically, 'Mrs. Whatsit loves me; that's what she told me, that she loves me,' suddenly she knew._

“ _She knew!_

“ _Love._

“ _That was what she had that IT did not have_.”

Lance closes the book with a solid thump. He looks at Keith—perhaps stares through him—and as Keith looks back, he sees the tendril of Lance's magic reaching out. Except this time, they are not strings, trying the world together, but rather an aura, something radiant and kind and beautiful.

It's only a second, before everything snaps back into place and the world sharpens cruelly and Keith sees the ties between Lance and his surroundings, see the magic in his voice as he speaks to Keith:

“Is that clear enough for you?” Lance says. His voice is on the edge of stern, smooth steel but polished and shining like silver. “You're doing magic for the wrong reason, Keith. You think you can fight and fight and fight your way through this, but that's not the answer. There is more to power than skill and anger. There is love.”

Hunk comes up behind him on the couch and rests a hand on Keith's shoulder. He feels the warmth of it through his shirt. A comfort, maybe, where Hunk was once a stranger.

“Oh,” Keith says, very quietly. “Oh.”

 

Keith spends the next four out of five days with Lance.

Which is... maybe just slowly driving him insane.

It's not that Lance is _that_ bad. He's actually, well, significantly less infuriating that Keith had originally expected.

Most of their time is spent in conversation. Lance talks a lot, and when he's not talking, he's prying information out of Keith. Little details: how he and Shiro were adopted, his dream job when he was a child, does he have any pets, his favorite flavor of ice cream. And it's in this that Keith starts to notice things about Lance, too.

He's quick-witted, disarmingly charming in the way that Keith expects to be annoying but surprisingly isn't, and gloriously adept at reading Keith even when he doesn't want to be read. Keith wonders if that last part is magic, or if it's just who Lance is.

The truly infuriating part is that Lance has barely taught him any magic since they've been working together. Keith has been allowed simple things—charming light into the space between his fingertips, pretty, but useless; rudimentary translation spells that let him read in another language for a few minutes; a tiny summoning spell to get all the stray cats in the alley behind Lance's apartment to gather for dinnertime.

Again, Keith isn't sure if that one's even magic, or if the cats just know Lance feeds them regularly at 8PM on the dot. More likely the latter.

Today, Lance meets Keith outside on the curb again, but when Keith starts towards the entrance to the apartment building, Lance catches his wrist with a quiet _Ah-ah_ falling from his lips.

“Field trip,” Lance says cheerfully.

Keith quirks an eyebrow at him. Is he finally going to actually teach? Four days, wasted, while he could be trying to find Shiro instead of doing party tricks.

“Where are we going?” Keith asks as Lance leads him away.

“Surprise,” Lance says. “You have a bus pass?”

Keith hesitates. The real answer is: technically. His student ID should still work, despite the fact he's all but dropped out from college since Shiro disappeared. Who knows how much he's missed in the past months. But he's... _technically_ still attending, so the student perk of free bus rides around town should apply.

“...Yes,” is what he finally says.

“Good,” Lance hums.

“So, where...”

“Ah,” Lance says again. “Surprise.”

“Do you actually know?”

Lance scoffs, mock offended. “You doubt me?”

“All the damn time,” Keith huffs as they wait at a city bus stop. “When are you actually going to teach me anything?”

“I'm hurt,” Lance sighs out, dramatic. Then, serious: “Trust in the system, Keith, even if you won't trust me.”

“You haven't given me a reason to trust you,” Keith counters. “You've done jack shit to help me.”

“Well,” Lance says slowly, as if contemplating that. Like he's filing away in his little mental folder of _Keith Information_ that he seems to be collecting, saving for an opportune moment. “I'm about to give you a reason, then, I guess.”

“What is it?”

Lance sighs. “You don't like surprises, do you?”

“Not really, no.”

Lance sighs again. “We're—”

“No, don't tell me now,” Keith interrupts, and immediately regrets it because Lance is one hundred and ten percent correct in that he doesn't like surprises. “It'll ruin it.”

Lance's face lights up, excitement lifting his cheeks and bringing that gleam back into his blue eyes. Magic, Keith thinks.

But no, just—just him—not magic—

Just Lance.

The bus arrives, and the moment is lost to the scramble of climbing on before the driver gets fed up with them and leaves.

Lance gets on first; Keith sees the flash of a student ID in Lance's hand as he follows.

The bus is nearly empty. Lance picks seats near the back.

“You're a student?” Keith asks. _I've never seen you_ stays unspoken.

“Yeah,” Lance says, quiet. A beat of silence. “Hell, you want me to give you reasons to trust me, so here's me being completely honest with you.”

Keith quirks an eyebrow at him, and waits.

Lance takes in a breath. “Part-time student,” he says. “Kinda bullshitting my way through until I can transfer into the major I want. I've already tried the past two years. GPA was too low to make the cut.”

“Oh,” Keith says. He scrambles for something to say. “What major?”

“Aerospace engineering.” Lance says the words with a mixture of sorrow and longing. Something just out of reach.

Something Keith has, and has taken for granted.

“Oh,” Keith says again. He keeps his mouth shut about the aerodynamics courses he should be attending right now. “Why don't you just... magic your way into it?”

Lance regards him for a moment, something unknown in Lance's gaze. “You'll get it eventually, I suppose,” he says. “That magic isn't for that sort of thing.”

“Didn't you tell me it could do anything?”

“Just because it can,” Lance says softly. “Does not mean it should. That's what I'm trying to teach you, Keith. That's what I'm about to show you. Magic comes from your heart—if your heart isn't in the right place, then your magic is poisoned.”

Lance glances out the window. “This is our stop.”

Lance extracts himself from both the seat and the conversation. Keith follows a step behind onto a suburban sidewalk.

“We're going to see my sister,” Lance announces after a few paces. “They're essentially muggles, though, so don't mention the whole magic thing.”

Keith's brow furrows. “O...kay. Why are we going to see your sister?”

“Because,” Lance states firmly. “You need to find your reason for magic. So I'm going to show you why I do it.”

“I want to find Shiro,” Keith argues. “That's why.”

“Yes,” Lance allows. He leads the way up a driveway and pauses in front of a green door, paint chipping off around the edges. “But you also want revenge on those who took him. That sort of intent is volatile, and it won't hold up when your anger eventually fades.”

“But—”

Lance knocks, and then turns to Keith with his finger pressed to his lips in a motion of _shh_.

The door opens to reveal a woman with long dark hair. Her eyes, as blue as Lance's, light up when she recognizes them. “Lance! Thank God, actually, you're just in time—Isabella just called because apparently they moved her nail appointment up an hour, and she said _yes_ , so—I gotta run.” The woman reaches for something behind the door as she speaks and then bustles out with a purse in one hand and car keys in the other. “Lauren's in her room. Don't get into trouble.”

Lance rolls easily with the apparent new info, shrugging casually and turning to offer his cheek as the woman leans in to drop a kiss there. “Bye Cat, have fun at prom!”

The woman—Cat—groans, and then laughs as she slides past them towards the driveway. “It's _Izzy's_ prom. I owe you!”

“Dinner!” Lance calls after her. “Friday. Get Isabella to babysit.”

Cat laughs again. “Deal.” She opens the car door, then calls over the hood. “Lemonade in the fridge if your friend wants some.”

“Keith,” Lance answers.

“Lemonade in the fridge if Keith wants some,” she easily corrects without missing a beat, and then, with the slam of a car door, she's gone.

“That,” Lance announces as he pushes the ajar door open further to lead the way in. “Is my eldest sister. She's the only one of us in my family who remotely has their life together. Happily married six years with the most adorable five year old daughter...”

“Tío Lance!”

A small creature barrels into Lance's legs.

Lance makes an _oof_ sound and then chuckles. “Hey, Kiddo. What have you been up to?”

“Mama said we could make cookies!” Lauren chirps excitedly.

“Did she now?” Lance hums.

“Yes!” Lauren says, tugging at Lance's hands. “Cookies!”

“Hold on, Lauren, I want you to meet someone.” Lance pries Lauren off him and gestures at Keith. “This is Keith. He's a friend of mine. Say hi.”

“Hi Keith!” Lauren quips excitedly.

“Hi,” Keith echoes back, feeling a bit out of depth.

“What do you do when you meet someone?” Lance prompts.

“Oh!” Lauren says, and quickly sticks out her tiny hand.

And okay, maybe Lance is right. Maybe she is adorable. Keith shakes her hand.

“Nice to meet you!” she announces.

“You too,” Keith chuckles.

“Cookies!” Lauren demands as soon as Keith releases her hand.

“Alright, alright,” Lance says. “Go wash your hands, and Keith and I will get the stuff.”

“Yesss!” Lauren does a victory fist-pump and scampers off to somewhere else in the house.

Meanwhile, Lance leads Keith to the kitchen. He starts going through cupboards and extracting bowls and various baking supplies.

“Can you get the chocolate chips?” Lance asks as he's riffling through a drawer. “Should be in the fridge. Second shelf.”

Keith busies himself with that, but Lance continues speaking.

“Would you believe me,” Lance says. “If I told you that little ray of sunshine was currently on the verge of dying?”

Keith's head whips up from where it's buried in the fridge. “What?”

“When Caterina was pregnant five years ago,” Lance explains, “She was in a car accident. It triggered her going into labor. Early, for one, but the baby was also hurt in the accident.”

Lance extracts a whisk from the drawer, sets it on the counter, and then turns to look at Keith. “It broke her. It broke my entire family. If there was anyone— _anyone—_ who deserved to have a happy life, it's Cat. She always cared so much for the rest of us... So I did whatever I could. I searched, made some bad choices, got into some bad scrapes, but eventually found Allura.”

“Christ,” Keith breathes out, chocolate chip mission forgotten.

“Allura saved her, at least for a while,” Lance says. “But even magic has some limitations. So Allura, albeit grudgingly, agreed to teach me. So that I could keep her alive.”

Lance seems to realize that Keith has completely disregarded his instructions. He walks over, slips past Keith to reach into the fridge and pull out a bag of chocolate chips—opened previously, kept fresh with a twist tie. His words are spoken at Keith's shoulder, fond.

“One day I'll teach her. Show her how to sustain herself. But with magic comes responsibility and... Knowing you're dying tends to weigh on you. I don't want to put that on her.”

Lauren comes barreling into the room, waving her hands in the air. “All clean!”

Lance's countenance brightens instantly, from sober to enthusiastic in a heartbeat. A heartbeat, measured, for the young girl in the room. “Good girl,” he praises, and Lauren beams at him.

Keith spends the rest of the day making cookies in this little glimpse of Lance's world. Here, it's warm with the heat of an oven, bright like Lauren's smile, soft like the look in Lance's eyes when he watches her make an absolute mess of the kitchen.

For Lance, this is where magic is.

And by the time Cat comes back later that night, Keith feels like his heart is oversaturated with the love held in this home. It's overwhelming, the way the air tastes like magic despite the fact he's fully aware Lance hasn't done anything but help his niece make cookies. It lingers on his skin, the affection, the excitement, the hope of tomorrow when, without the fortune of magic, tomorrow would have been hopeless.

Lance hugs Lauren goodbye as they leave.

Keith sees it then: the spark between his fingertips, splayed over her back. He sees the strings of the world tighten, snap, tangle, singe, and then it all falls into place. Lance grins, ruffles Lauren's hair, and follows Keith out the front door. Lauren waves goodbye at them, completely unaware.

This—this is magic. As it should be.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i'm still crying over this it's so fucking cute [please click me and proceed to gush at Marin over how stunning this is](https://little-lucky-angel.tumblr.com/post/173203373619/hello-good-people-at-long-last-my-works-for)
> 
> also if you haven't read a wrinkle in time i highly recommend. it's so much better than the movie.
> 
> also i think i technically wrote this after s5 but i've had names picked out for lance's sibs since before then and i like. half forgot to use the canon ones so. in this house we ignore canon like men as per usual


	3. Chapter 3

Keith was supposed to meet Lance at his apartment today. Instead, they're in the basement floor of Allura's firm, tucked into a side room set off from the training space. In it is a multitude of—well, Keith can only describe it as a bunch of shit.

Sundry objects are scattered across the floor. Children's toys, stuffed animals and action figures; a silver cane with a dragon carved into the handle; Keith is pretty sure that's a gurney pushed against the far wall, which doesn't necessarily bode well.

At the center of the room is a large table, more assorted piles of junk cluttering the surface. Pidge's laptop sits on the edge, precariously balanced against a flowerpot filled with marbles.

“What the fuck,” is the first thing Keith says when he walks in.

“Hunk,” Lance says, pained expression only mostly concealed. There's a cringe hidden under the saccharine of his voice. “We need to have a talk about your organizational system.”

“No, no!” Hunk says cheerfully. “Pidge helped me color code everything.”

Lance looks like he's about to be sick.

It occurs to Keith that, surprisingly, it must be Lance who's the driving force behind the relative cleanliness of his and Hunk's shared apartment.

“Anyway,” Pidge says. They grin, something excited and just a bit wicked. “We think we found something.”

“Look,” Hunk says, and picks up something from the table. “Ordinary bouncy ball, right? Nothing fancy.” He bounces it, once, and catches it, to demonstrate. “Completely normal.”

Lance squints at him for a moment. “Okay.”

“Now watch,” Hunk says dramatically. He places the bouncy ball on top of a stack of books, takes a moment to make sure it won't roll away. Furrowing his brows, Hunk waggles his fingers at it. He splays them out—does some complicated pattern that Keith can't quite follow but can feel the magic from.

Lance must see something that Keith doesn't, because his entire body jerks. “Holy shit, Hunk!” he cries. “You did it!”

Hunk _beams_ , and then reaches across the table to give Pidge a fist bump. “ _We_ did it.”

“Does it work like—” Lance starts.

“Yeah!” Hunk interrupts, apparently doing that best friend thing where you finish each other's sentences.

“What... exactly... happened?” Keith mumbles out.

Lance glances at him, then back tot he ball in Hunk's hands. “You don't see it?”

Keith shakes his head. Lance reaches for his hand, and Keith lets him because—unfortunately, he realizes—he's gotten used to Lance touching him. He feels the gentle pulse of Lance's magic against his skin, and suddenly light flashes in front of him.

He blinks away the field of white until his vision returns, except it's not the same. Keith stares down at his and Lance's hands, where the faint red glow coming off his skin is mingling—fighting, maybe, but he's not really sure—with the blue aura around Lance.

“What,” Keith says.

“You're seeing through my eyes right now,” Lance says. “Have you really been magic blind this whole time?”

Keith shrugs, looks across the room. Pidge is curled up on their chair, sitting on their haunches, surrounded by a cloud of green; Hunk, a soft, warm, yellow; the ball in his hand, a vibrant orange. A couple of other things around the room have faint light surrounding them, too, but many of them are dulled grey or flickering... Except—in the corner of the room, unattached to anything, Keith catches sight of a wisp of white, just enough to draw his eye before it disappears.

“I guess I've always just kinda... felt it,” he finally answers Lance.

“Huh,” Lance says, filing that away in his Keith-info-bank, too. He lets Keith's hand fall from his, and the lights disappear. “Alright, Hunk, show us what you got.”

Hunk drops the ball, bouncing it at his feet. He dramatically gestures at it with his hands. “Ta-da!”

Lance quirks an eyebrow at him.

“Perpetual motion,” Pidge supplies. “Essentially.”

“And,” Hunk says with emphasis. “In theory, anyone who holds it never gets tired.”

Lance looks sufficiently intrigued. “It works?”

“In theory,” Hunk repeats. “We've made progress. It's not perfect, but we've gotten somewhere—”

“And it's the item, right?” Lance interrupts. “Not the person who made it?”

Hunk squints at him for a moment, and then realization passes over his face. “You're asking, if perhaps, that someone who doesn't know magic could still get the potential... benefits from the item regardless of whether or not the enchanter themself was within range, say, out of the country—”

Keith can hear Lance's breath catch in his chest.

“That would,” Hunk continues. “Again, in theory, be possible.”

“Unfortunately,” Pidge says. “We first have to find a way to prevent this.” They put their palm out, mutter something under their breath, and suddenly the ball drops, deadened, to the ground, as if it'd be placed there and not bouncing a moment before.

“The enchants are too... Unaligned to be self-sustaining.” Keith thinks they repeat the same spell Hunk did earlier, but he's not completely sure. Either way, when Hunk picks it up and drops it, the ball starts bouncing in place again. “Other magic-uses can influence them. Either take their power or alter it.”

“If you left something unguarded,” Hunk adds. “It's likely someone else would do something to it. At the very least, steal its magic, but at the worst, if the Galra got their hands on it...” Hunk shakes his head so violently that his shoulders shake with the movement. “Bad. Very bad.”

Lance sighs. “There's always a catch,” he says. “But you're right. Progress. Can you show me how?”

“Of course, Buddy. You know the drill.”

Lance slips away from Keith's side, turning to look through the piles of junk in the room, occasionally moving something out the way or picking it up to examine it.

Pidge turns to Keith. “Do you want to try?”

Keith shrugs. “Sure, I guess.”

Pidge grins. “Good, 'cause I think I found some stuff in here you'd like.”

They hop out of the chair, and motion for Keith to follow as they lead the way towards one of the back of the room. They struggle to pull a large trunk away from the wall, before huffing and waving their hand. The trunk moves by itself.

Pidge kneels down and opens it, flipping the lid to rest against—yup, that was definitely a gurney Keith saw earlier. Where does all this shit even come from?

“What the fuck,” Keith says, staring at the gurney.

“What?” Pidge says, glancing up. They sound displeased until they see Keith isn't looking at the trunk. “Oh, yeah, I have no idea. Allura and Hunk are hoarders apparently.”

“I can see th—” Keith looks down at the contents of the trunk and freezes. “You kidding.”

Pidge grins. “Motherload, right?”

“Holy shit,” Keith wheezes out. He drops down onto the floor next to Pidge and reaches out to run his fingers over one of the blades. “These are so cool.”

“I thought you might wanna try enchanting one of 'em,” Pidge says. “I dunno why they're here, but I'm pretty sure they're fair game.”

“I think I'm in love,” Keith whispers. He pulls out a small knife with a wrapped handle. The blade is tinted purple.

“I know I'm awesome, but you're really not my type,” Pidge says.

Keith laughs. “Fuck you,” he says. “I wanna try this one.”

“Sure,” Pidge says. “Okay so the spell we use is a pretty generic one. You're gonna have to work on it yourself to figure out the details. I'm not super great at explaining it, but I think once you do it once you can figure it out so just try it.”

“Amazing teacher,” Keith mutters.

“Fuck you,” Pidge says.

“You're not really my type,” Keith echoes, sticking his tongue out at Pidge.

Pidge swats at him. “Shut up,” they laugh. “You stole my line. Zero points for originality. Anyway.”

Pidge works Keith's hands into place, showing him the proper positions to use the spell.

Keith tries to work his way through the spell mentally. He recognizes the general spot to add what he specifically wants to enchant, but even if he did have the right words to alter it perfectly, he's not sure what he wants to enchant. Maybe something to help him find Shiro... He's going to have to find a way to get through to Galra when he eventually finds him, and he's pretty good with a broadsword if his four years training during high school have anything to say for themselves...

So that's it, he decides. He pulls magic around him, wraps it around both himself and the knife, writes the words of the spell into the metal as he performs it.

When he's done, with a flash, the knife shifts into a broadsword, the same design, same color. Mostly just larger and weighed better.

“You turned a knife... into a bigger knife,” Pidge states. They start laughing, heartily. “Only you.”

“Listen,” Keith says indignantly. “I'm not great at this.”

Pidge starts _howling_. “A... knife.... bigger knife!” they wheeze out between cackles.

“Shut up,” Keith growls at them. He swipes the blade through the air a couple of times experimentally, and almost knocks over the stack of books on the table. Maybe not the best place to try this.

“Do you still remember your broadsword form?” Pidge asks, voice still breathy but mostly recovered.

“Eh,” Keith says. “The form itself was mostly for show.” He swings through the air again—the blade flies from his hands and clatters against the wall.

Pidge makes a _pfft_ sound at him. “Smooth.”

Keith, brow furrowed, looks down at his hands. “I didn't... Huh.”

“Guess you're not as good as you remember,” Pidge says.

“Guess not,” Keith says.

“Keith!” Lance calls from across the room. “Come here.”

Keith obediently makes his way towards Lance and Hunk. Lance is holding something up for him—a corded necklace with a metal pendant in the vague shape of a 'v'.

“What?”

“Here,” Lance says. “You're my test run.”

“Sorry?” Keith says, but Lance is reaching around him to clasp the necklace around Keith's neck. Keith gets a whiff of Lance's shampoo, this close, and feels his heart stutter into overdrive, and then Lance is pulling away.

“I-I'm sorry,” Keith chokes out. “What?”

“Hold on,” Lance says, and uses one hand to hold the pendant while he casts with the other.

There's that same flash of white light, bright and blinding, and then the colors are back: Lance, watching Keith, glowing faintly blue.

“Test run,” Lance repeats. “Also since you're apparently magic blind, I thought this would help with your training. It's hard to work with stuff you can't see. I would have done something about it earlier if I'd known, but you were such a damn natural...”

“Oh,” Keith says. He reaches up to run his fingers over the pendant and the colors around him grow brighter at the contact before fading to something less distracting as he pulls away. He swallows. “Thanks.”

“Uh, Keith?” Pidge calls from the other side of the room, and then screams.

Keith turns just in time to watch the sword jolt wildly across the room from where it'd been apparently hovering in place above where it had previously fallen. Now that he has the necklace, Keith can see a dark purple smoke coming off of it.

Pidge ducks, rolling under the table for cover. The blade slams into the wall, this time ricocheting towards Keith, Lance, and Hunk.

“Shit,” Keith says, but Hunk is grabbing both him and Lance and dragging them down. He pulls them under the table with Pidge while the knife flies around above them.

“What did you _do_?” Pidge hisses at Keith.

“I don't know!”

Lance lets out a soft noise, something like disappointment. “It'll wear itself out, right?” he asks Hunk.

“It sho—” he breaks off as there's the sound of a soft thud, and then bouncy ball—which had still been bouncing—now rolls under the table with them. “Well,” Hunk says. “It was supposed to, until it leeched the bouncy ball magic. Now I'm not sure.”

“Of course,” Pidge grumbles. “ _Of course_.”

“Can't we just take the magic back?” Keith asks. “Like with the bouncy ball. Just change it.”

Lance pushes a chair out of the way and peeks out from under the table. He squeaks and then ducks back under moments before some books fall where he'd been. Then the books start floating, oozing tendrils of dark-tinted magic.

“Oh no,” says Hunk.

“That's not supposed to happen,” Pidge says.

“Not _supposed_ to,” Hunk mumbles. He's gripping worriedly onto Lance's shoulder. “I did this before on accident though. If the magic you enchant with is too volatile, the item itself can go wild. And it can spread.”

Lance stares at the books. He chants the removal spell and recoils. “No. Bad plan. Can't take it back.”

“Call Allura,” Pidge tells Hunk.

Hunk fumbles with his pants. “... My phone is on the table.”

Lance digs his phone out of his pocket and passes it over his shoulder to Hunk while simultaneously kicking away a levitating book. Keith lunges forward and pulls the chair back in place to keep more things from getting close.

“She didn't answer,” Hunk cries after a moment.

“Fuck,” Lance says. “Yeah, she usually ignores my calls.”

“Use mine,” Keith says, passing Hunk his phone after unlocking it. “She might pick up if she sees more than one person calling.”

They wait with baited breaths as Hunk types in Allura's number. Above them, there's the sound of metal scraping.

“...How much do you want to bet that was the sword trunk that just got magicked?” Pidge groans.

“Hi, Allura? Oh, thank God, yeah—sorry to bother you it's just we're kinda trapped in the supply room with a bunch of floating stuff? Namely a sword. Magic sword. Please come save us. We're stuck under the table and I'm kinda freaking out. Are you guys freaking out? Oh—oh thank you thank you—oh she hung up.”

“She's coming?” Lance asks.

“Yes,” Hunk breathes out with relief.

A few moments later, the door to the room flings open with a bang. Allura's voice washes over them with power laced in her tone, and there's a cacophony of noise as everything in the room that's currently floating clatters to the ground.

 

Allura's eye narrow as she runs her hand over the knife before glancing up at Keith.

They're standing in the training room, now, safe from the horror of flying knives, but Allura kept them all here after finding the source of the problem: the knife.

And now she's finding the source of the knife: Keith.

“The Galra use magic like this,” she tells him.

“What?” His tongue feels too thick in his mouth; shell-shocked.

“He did pick up magic really quickly for having never done it before,” Hunk murmurs, eyes wide. “Just an observation. I don't really think Keith is Galra.”

“Hunk!” Lance hisses, half-incredulous and half-scolding. “Allura, you're not really considering—” he starts, but Allura cuts him off with a dismissive raise of her hand.

Allura presses her lips into a thin line, eye calculating. Keith stares back.

“I'm not saying Keith is Galra,” Hunk is whispering to Lance. “But it wouldn't be impossible.”

“You're kidding, right?” Pidge scoffs. “If Keith is Galra, then I am too.”

Allura doesn't take her gaze from Keith, but she lets out a darkly thoughtful noise at Pidge's words. “Either you are, or you don't know your friend as well as you thought.”

Keith's brain finally decides to catch up with everything. “ _What_?” he squawks out. “I've know Pidge almost my entire life—and—I'm not with the Galra!” He pauses. “I don't know what to tell you to make you believe me. I had no idea what the Galra were before I met Lance and Hunk, and I still don't even remember that very well.”

“Regardless of whether you are a spy or not, your magic is too much like the Galra for me to continue to teach you. I will not make my father's mistakes. You will poison anything you cast, and I will not teach you how to wield that poison to your whim.”

Keith's mouth drops open. “But—but—I need—you have to help me find Shiro. I have to—”

“Leave,” Allura says. “You're no longer welcome here.”

“What the fuck,” Pidge says. “Then—then I'm leaving too,” they add, but their resolve weakens as they speak.

“Allura, don't do this,” Lance says. “He's not like Zarkon, and you know that—”

“Zarkon was good once, too,” Allura snaps. “Don't act like you know my past better than I do, Lance. My decision is made. Escort Keith out.”

“No need,” Keith growls. “I'm going. I'll find Shiro on my own.”

Pidge starts forward and Keith turns to go.

“Stay,” he calls angrily over his shoulder. “You fit in here. You like it here. Don't throw it away. I'm fine alone.”

Part of him wants Pidge to angrily storm out with him, but he knows them. He knows that this is finally a place they found that they belong. He's not going to take that from them.

Even if Allura's taken that from him.

He needs to find Shiro.

 

The arch is the strongest single structure.

Keith's an engineer; he knows this.

The anatomy of an arch: the _impost—_ the transitional stone between the supporting column and the beginning of the curve; the _voussoir—_ the wedge-shaped stones that create the typical arch curve; and the _keystone_.

The keystone, a definition: the single voussior at the center and top of the arch which supports the compression force from either side so that the weight of the arch can be transferred to the ground without collapsing. Read: the most important piece of the whole structure.

Shiro is Keith's keystone.

When Shiro had gone missing—it was like everything fell apart around Keith. He'd had a support group built up here, formed out of friendship with Matt and Pidge. They were his voussoir, but that meant they, too, relied on Shiro. And when Shiro was gone, they all collapsed, falling to the ground with the crushing force of their own weight.

It's not just Keith that needs him—it's Matt, too, and Pidge, and the Holt family, and all the students in Shiro's TA section, and the professors he promised to work with—

Shiro is missing, and it's taking all that Keith can do just to keep everything from crumbling to dust.

The next few days are the most brutal, devastating days Keith's been through since immediately after Shiro disappeared. He spends them stubbornly—manically—scouring for anything he can find on magic, on the galra, on Shiro. Part of him is livid with Pidge for not showing up at all. He said they could stay, but he didn't want them to cut him off.

Looks like he's back to going at it alone.

Allura may be unwilling to teach him, but she can't take his magic. Keith divides his time between searching for any and all information and practicing the magic he has been taught. Sitting in his room, he trades off perfecting a simple spell, one at a time, and reading through sketchy conspiracy sites about the missing persons in town or about magic.

He digs up a couple of actual spells online, somehow, and perfects those, too. Party tricks, but who knows? Knowing how to make a coin appear in someone's pocket is definitely going to be useful, someday.

After the first day or so, the residual anger fades to an ache in his heart, etched into the marrow of his bones where he misses Shiro most.

He tries to hold onto the fury, because that can drive him. It keeps him up while darkness falls around him, casting moonshadows across his floor. He clings to the flame of his hatred, simmers in his resentment, fights and fights and fights until angry, hot tears are streaming down his cheeks.

His magic fizzles in his fingertips. Allura is right; his power comes from something dark. It's volatile, reaching out with toxic tendrils to spread its loathing. His spells are powerful but fickle, and he lacks the precision he so strives for. His drive is a pot over a fire—except that all the water has boiled away and there's nothing left but the charred, darkened metal, stained.

It begins to eat at him. The pain of missing Shiro hits once again with its full hurricane force—the magic had been enough to distract him, but now that, too, is gone. Keith feels himself shrink in on himself.

He curls into a ball on his bed and—

And does nothing.

God, it just fucking hurts.

He thinks he gets up a couple of times. Maybe eats. Maybe changes clothes. Probably doesn't shower.

Occasionally checks for any news. Keeps his eye out for a miracle.

When Shiro disappeared, Keith still had just enough hope and just enough crazy to keep himself going until Pidge teamed up with him, which means this is the shutdown he's postponed since Shiro left him.

This is the pain he didn't let himself feel.

This is mourning.

The tears come, and he's really not sure if they ever stop.

 

And this is how Lance finds him.

His chest heaves with another sob, body shaking—possibly because he probably hasn't eaten since yesterday sometime. The room is dark, at least until there's the glow of a portal opening in Keith's wall, and Lance gingerly steps through.

When the light fades, Lance is left squinting in the dark.

Keith can't bring himself to care.

“Keith?” Lance calls.

He can't really bring himself to respond, either.

Light casts suddenly over the room. For a moment, Keith thinks Lance is using magic, but no, that's just his desk lamp, warm against his skin. Some things, after all, are exactly what they appear to be—simply human.

“...Keith?” Lance asks, softer.

Keith makes some sort of noise of acknowledgment. He's aware of Lance's presence. He doesn't know what Lance expects him to _do_ about it.

“Oh, Christ, Keith,” Lance says quietly. “Shit, I didn't realize—I would have come sooner.”

Lance carefully places his hand on Keith's shoulder, and when Keith doesn't visibly recoil, he sits on the edge of the bed. There's the soft pulse of soothing magic from his fingertips.

Keith makes a noise that may or may not be a hiss and jerks his shoulder away.

Lance's hand flies away from him, breath catching in his chest. “No magic?” he whispers.

“No,” Keith croaks at him.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“ _No_.”

“Okay,” Lance breathes out, and places his hand once again on Keith's shoulder. “No magic, I promise.”

His hand strokes slowly down Keith's arm, soothing. Keith breathes deep in time with Lance's movement. It's not quite a peace that settles over him, but whatever it is, it stops him from freefalling into the depths of his anguish. It's a start.

And then Lance begins to sing.

“ _End of May or early June_

_This picture-perfect afternoon we shared_

_Drive the winding country road_

_Grab a scoop at_ _Á_ _La Mode_

_And then we're there..._ ”

Keith doesn't know what it's from, but the pitch of Lance's voice lulls him into some sort of stasis. It grounds him, lets him focus on the words and tune and the steady rhythm of Lance's hand stroking over his shoulder to his elbow.

And when Lance stops, Keith manages a hoarse: “Keep going.”

“Oh,” Lance says, seemingly surprised. “Shit, uh, okay. Same musical?”

Keith shrugs, the movement jostling Lance's hand, and then he settles back into place and Lance's voice settles around him, too.

“ _He said_

_There's nothing like your smile_

_Sort of subtle and perfect and real_

_He said_

_You never knew how wonderful_

_That smile could make someone feel..._ ”

And for some reason, this song—now that Lance knows Keith requested something—seems just a bit more carefully chosen.

The full meaning behind this moment may escape Keith even years from now. In this moment, he's too busy counting his own breaths, full with the realization that it's not the end. He's not giving up. He's not _alone_.

Whatever Lance is saying in the words laced in melody, _if I could tell him_ , passes nearly completely over Keith's head.

Nearly. At least a little bit of it sticks, makes his heartbeat pickup with that hint of realization.

Lance finishes the song.

Keith scrubs at his face with his hands, feeling just a tiny bit more like the world isn't going to crush him. He turns over his shoulder to look up at Lance, and Lance's smile, bathed in soft yellow lamp light as it is, lights up the entire damn room.

“Another?” Lance offers. “I totally have the lungs for _Defying Gravity_.”

Keith shakes his head. He doesn't even know what that _means_.

“Uh,” he says instead. “Water?”

“Oh,” Lance says, looking a bit ashamed he hadn't realized. “Yeah, sure, I can—kitchen?”

Keith points at his bedroom door. Lance picks himself up off of Keith's bed and disappears into the rest of the apartment.

Keith hears a couple of doors open and close, but eventually the sound of running water rumbles through the walls. Keith pulls himself up, scooting back to lean against the wall so at least he's no longer a vague lump on his bed.

He runs his fingers through his hair—or, well, tries to. They get stuck in the tangles and he has fight to get them the rest of the way through. He's a mess.

Lance comes back with a cup in hand. He passes it to Keith and sits on the bed again, half-facing Keith as he chugs down the water.

When Keith finishes, he finds Lance watching him. He should get up and actually—take a shower, maybe aim for being a functioning human being, but his limbs feel like lead and Lance's eyes keep him pinned in place. He carefully sets the empty cup down.

“I'm sorry,” Lance says.

Keith's brow furrows. If anyone, he's the one who should...

“I should have come sooner, but I didn't think—I didn't realize what your magic would do to you—”

Keith chokes out a confused noise. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought—” Lance starts and then breaks off. “I presumed this was a spell gone wrong or...”

Keith snorts. “No,” he says curtly, and then his voice mellows into something mournful. “This was just... me making up for the past, I guess.”

“So... no magic?”

Keith shakes his head. “Not really, no. Though you... or Allura—I don't know—anyway, my magic is...” Keith picks his hand up and makes a so-so gesture. “Not good.”

There's a half-smile quirking the corner of Lance's lips up. “Not good?”

“Not good,” Keith repeats.

“Your magic is fine,” Lance says after a beat. “I—you just need to work on keeping your heart in the right place when you cast.”

“Whatever _that_ means,” Keith mutters.

Lance reaches out and rests a hand on Keith's leg, comforting. “You'll get it.”

Keith gives a half-hearted shrug.

“So... uh, whatever it is that...” Lance picks his hand up off of Keith in other to gesture vaguely at him. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No, it's...” Keith draws in a shaky breath. “It's fine. I—I just—I miss him. Shiro, I mean. I miss him.”

Lance bites his lip, and then lets out a slow exhale. His gaze on Keith is like glass: fragile, beautiful, and so, so transparent. Keith can see the exact moment when Lance makes up his mind.

“I could... I could wipe your memory, if you wanted. You'd probably have to move somewhere else if you didn't want a bunch of people talking about Shiro and getting past the wipe, but... I could do it. You could forget. You could be happy.”

Keith stares at him for a moment. Licks his lips. “I'm not giving up,” he says with resolve. “I'm not going to abandon Shiro.”

“Oh,” Lance breathes out with obvious relief. “Good... Because I really, really didn't want to do that.”

Keith lets that settle over him. “Why?”

Lance swallows. “Because I had hoped...” he trails off and trails his fingers over Keith's blanket.

“Lance?”

“I had hoped you were a better person than that... I know you are, I just—I—”

And then, against his better judgment, Keith is shoving away from the wall and pressing a kiss to Lance's cheek before he has a chance to second guess it. He quickly pulls away, sitting on his knees.

Lance breaks off with a soft noise of choked surprise. He turns to stare at Keith, wide-eyed and awed, and, as if he can't quite believe it, he raises his hand to the place where Keith's lips were a heartbeat before.

“Thanks, Lance,” Keith says softly. “For having faith in me.”

Lance's voice cracks when he speaks. “Ye-ah?”

Keith finds himself smiling, despite everything. “Yeah.”

Lance looks away, cheeks darkening considerably. He clears his throat, hugs his arms around his chest self-consciously, and then opens back up, glancing at Keith through the corner of his eyes.

“I, uh, actually came to teach you. Allura doesn't know.”

Hope sparks in Keith's chest. “Won't Allura kick you out if she finds out?”

“Yeah,” Lance admits. “But I trust you.” He glances more fully at Keith, shifting on the bed so that he's facing him. “I think you're worth it.”

Keith stares at him, and this time it's not Lance who's wide-eyed and awestruck.

“Can I kiss you?” Lance blurts. “Like for real?”

Keith realizes his mouth is dry. He doesn't know why Lance wants to kiss him when he's an absolute mess. He hasn't showered in days, probably hasn't brushed his teeth, either, so that's... gross. He's gross. He nods, anyway.

And Lance moves closer, anyway. He brushes his hand over Keith's knee, letting it rest over his thigh. Keith feels his breath come short in his lungs, anticipation thrumming in his veins. He licks his lips and watches as Lance's gaze automatically flicks down to follow the movement and sticks there.

Lance's other hand comes up to rest along Keith's jaw, guiding, and then he's leaning forward to finally kiss Keith in a simple press of lips. Soft and warm and gentle and with just the tiniest spark of magic tingling underneath.

 _For real_. That's what it is.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> songs from dear evan hansen which is an absolutely amazing musical and please listen to it


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahaha i was going to add another scene or so before i posted this chapter but i kept putting it off because writer's block and being out of the country/busy so...  
> filler, anyone??? c:  
> i'm sorry i'm a hot mess but this shit is gonna get finished........ eventually. lmao.

Things are easy between them.

That night they kissed, Lance had stayed. Ordered takeout and patiently waited while Keith made an attempt at cleaning himself up.

He didn't demand anything. Didn't impose anything beyond his presence, which Keith took as a comfort more than anything else.

 _You're not alone_ , it said.

Lance let Keith lean on his shoulder and maybe cry a bit more and did all the things that Keith supposes a good boyfriend would.

Which, he also suppose is what they could be, if they actually sat down and talked about it. But they don't. There are other things to worry about, like the Galra and Shiro and magic.

But this—whatever it is—is easy.

 

“You're not going to like this,” Lance announces a few days after Keith's breakdown. He takes a swig from his lemonade.

They're sitting on the back porch of Lance's sister's house, watching Lauren play in the dirt.

Keith glances sideways at him. “What?”

“Your magic,” Lance states. “Has nothing to do with finding Shiro.”

Keith feels his brows pull together, and he carefully sips at his lemonade in order to avoid immediately cursing at Lance. “You're right,” he passively says, instead of something nasty. “I don't like it.”

“I told you.”

Keith narrows his eyes at him. “So why did you say it?”

Lance stares back, unfazed. “Because you needed to hear it.”

“I don't get it,” Keith says after a beat. “How? Shiro going missing is the only reason I met you and started learning magic.”

“That's just it. Shiro _going missing_. Not Shiro himself. I'm telling you that—right now—your magic doesn't have a strong enough value system to sit on.”

Keith looks at Lance incredulously.

“That's why it's so volatile. For example,” Lance continues. “Would you believe it that I've taught Lauren magic before? I have. Wiped her memory of it after, but she can do magic perfectly fine.” Lance snorts. “Better than you.”

Keith just stares at him, only slightly flabbergasted and maybe only slightly more insulted. “ _Why_?”

“Not the important part, but I'll indulge you. Memory wipes are never perfect. There's always some way of getting past the block. You still remember, in a way. Your body will remember even if your mind doesn't. It's there, somewhere. Even if the wipes are too good for her to actually remember, she _knows_ how. If I teach her now, while it's easy, it will feel natural when eventually teach her for real.”

“While it's easy?”

“Bingo,” Lance says, and winks. “There's the key part. Lauren's still a kid. She understands the world in rules, but only because Cat gets mad at her when breaks them, not because she has a distinct moral compass. She's a blank slate. Magic is easy because all of her emotions are face-value. There's no motive or underlying intent when she casts. There's no deep-rooted beliefs or values to get in the way of base intent. Magic to her is simply magic. There's no reason for it. It just is. It's how she lives. Things just are.

“But once you start growing up, you start finding direction. It's a good thing, but it makes magic more complicated. Magic is about you. All you. It's who you are. That's why _finding_ Shiro means nothing. You keep focusing on the task. And I get it, I was like that, too, when my main goal was to help Lauren, but you need to stop thinking so much about what you want to accomplish. That's not what magic is about.”

Keith's body feels heavy. He's lets his mind roll Lance's words around lazily, carefully musing over them as they pass through.

“So start thinking about what Shiro means to you. About how he's made you into _you_. But it's not just Shiro. It's everything. Magic is about what you _care_ about, but indirectly. It's less about the solution and more about the progress. Lauren isn't alive today because I wanted it so badly that I made it happen. Lauren's alive because I love her, and that's a part of who I am.”

Keith lets out a quiet scoff. “No offense, but that sounds like bull.”

“Doesn't it?” Lance says, and takes another drink from his glass. “But it's true. Sometimes you need to step back and see the bigger picture.” He pauses, watches Keith for a moment. “Maybe this will help. Allura told me back when you first started that you cast on instinct. Work with that. Don't think; just do. And when you stop thinking about finding Shiro and defeating the Galra and having a horrible haircut—” Keith swats at Lance's leg on that one, but Lance barrels on anyway, “—then things start to fall into place. All that's left is what you feel. What's at your core. Do you love Shiro?”

Keith blinks, taken aback. “Of course I do.”

“Then that's it. It's in your instinct to love Shiro. Don't make it any more complicated than that.”

Keith lets out a hum. He swirls the melting ice cubes in his glass, and then looks at Lance.

“Thanks,” he says. “For dealing with me. I'm not sure if I deserve it.”

“Of course you do,” Lance says without hesitation.

“I feel like you could just be saying that.”

“No. You deserve it. I know you do.” Lance looks at him and smiles. There's magic in it. “Call it instinct.”

 

It's about 7PM. The gravel paving under Keith's shoes crunches with each slight movement. Two of Lance's alleyway cats are lurking near the side of the building, watching them. Or, more likely, waiting for Food Time™.

Hunk is at work at a local mechanics'—Lance hasn't let him in on the whole secret-Keith-training thing, apparently, which is possibly why it's still secret because according to Lance, Hunk tends to gossip. In the meantime, Lance is finally teaching Keith something _useful_.

Though, if Keith was being completely honest, he does see it now. He gets it, that Lance was trying to teach him something more important the entire time. It took a few days, even after their conversation in Caterina's backyard, and the past 72 hours or so have been filled with more frustration than Keith's ever dealt with in his entire life. Even that Thermodynamics course last semester wasn't this bad.

But it's finally clicked into place, just a little.

Somewhere along the line, something _stuck_. Keith doesn't think he quite sees it exactly how Lance does, but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe he's making it his own version of magic. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be.

Because it's so much more than Keith—he's such a small piece. The world is so much bigger, but he has to play his part in it. It doesn't matter, really, if he finds Shiro or doesn't (though, on a far more personally level, it matters very, _very_ much). He's so distinctly insignificant. The universe is so much boarder, so much more vast, so much more infinite than any legacy he will ever leave behind.

Something he'd picked up, something that called him to the sky in thee first place, the currently small flame of passion for space that got him into engineering: _he is nothing more than stardust_.

He knows that something's changed. It must have, because right now, watching Lance, Keith can actually see the faint glow flare up around him as he uses his magic to charm the two cats closer.

One of them, a calico, stalks up to him and then sits at his feet. She doesn't do the usual cat-rub-scenting-thing, but as soon as Lance bends down to pet her, she starts purring. The other, long-furred and grey, bounds over, nearly tripping over it's own feet in order to reach Lance.

“Hey girls,” he says as he uses both hands to pet them. “How are my favorite kitties doing?”

“I don't know if they count as your favorite if you have to cast on them to get them to like you,” Keith retorts.

“Hey,” Lance huffs back. “They love me. I feed them. Sometimes they just need a little encouragement to let me pet them. Aren't you supposed to be practicing?”

“Aren't you supposed to be teaching?” Keith fires back.

“I already taught you the spell.”

“Hmm,” Keith pretends to be thinking that over. “But maybe I need something a little more hands-on.”

Lance straightens. Suddenly he turns to Keith and grins devilishly. “Oh, I'll show you hands-on, alright.”

And that's all the warning Keith gets before he's being thrown across the alleyway.

It catches Keith a little bit off guard, but he manages to cast a quick protection spell. That much he knows exceedingly well. When he'd sparred with Lance before, it was more a battle of reaction and wit than anything else. Since, at the time, Keith wasn't learning any real attack spells, they were using spells to give each of them temporary aptitudes in various fighting styles. It was a quick back and forth of casting and stamina, rather than a true battle.

But now, Lance isn't pulling any punches, and Keith is only barely managing to keep up.

Keith starts on the spell Lance had just taught him. It's essentially an arrow, a sharp dart of magic aimed at an opponent, but it takes some time to cast. Before Keith can finish, Lance is flinging a small orb of magic at Keith.

Keith has to abort his current spell in favor of muttering out a reflex-improvement spell and dancing away from Lance's attack.

He tries again, and this time Lance lets him finish casting. But instead of landing a hit, Lance pulls up a transparent blue shield right before the arrow grazes him. It bounces off, and Keith flinches out of the way, only to realize it had fizzled into nothing by the time it reached him.

“Come on,” Lance taunts. “Hands-on, you said?”

Lance lifts his arms up in the air—familiar shapes—and then all of Keith's muscles are locked in place.

“Did you know,” Lance says conversationally, while Keith struggles against his magic. “That when you and Pidge caught me, I still could have gotten away?”

“What?” Keith croaks out, only barely able to talk.

“I know plenty of spells that don't require my limbs. It takes practice, but lots of spells that do have physical casting requirements _can_ be done without them, too. Maybe not as strong, but they're doable. I could have escaped, easily.”

Keith grunts out a response.

“Not so cocky now, huh?” Lance taunts.

Keith bares his teeth at him. He breathes in, harsh enough that the air sears against his throat, remembers the beat of Allura's magic, back when she was first teaching him. The tempo is different now, the pitch changed from mellow and deep to something shrill and frantic.

But it's there.

Keith feels it jump through his muscles, feels the quick count of _onetwothreesnap_ , and when he blinks he finds he's no longer blind.

Metaphors, Allura had said, as if they actually helped. Metaphors, as if that was how magic works. Metaphors, as if its anything except the pounding of his own blood in his veins, pulsing to the rhythm of the universe.

He's still learning how to read auras—something Lance is exceedingly adept at—but he's always been good at seeing the strings of fate. Just under the surface, everything's connected.

Right now, though, all he cares about is him and Lance.

There are some strings he doesn't want to snap. He can tell by the soft beat of its vibration at one thread binding them is the magic of their affection, wound together in complex braids, because that's what they are: complex, convoluted, probably a little conflicted and confused, too.

But there are other threads binding them now, and they're the ones Lance is using to bind Keith's limbs. So those are exactly the ones Keith takes hold of. He twists them around his fingertips, winds them until they cut off the circulation of his spirit, and then he _pulls_.

Like before, Lance's magic falls away from him, and Keith steps forward, free to move. But he's not done.

“I'm the cocky one?” Keith growls back. He knots the threads in his hands, tangles the strings, uses his magic to loop them around Lance. This time, when he pulls, they tighten around their caster.

“Ye—” Lance cuts off, mouth frozen around the word. His eyes go wide, maybe a little impressed.

“Lets see it then,” Keith snarls, low. He presses into Lance's personal space, keeping a clinging grip onto Lance's spell. “Go on,” he urges. “Get free.”

Lance's eyes narrow minutely. He drags in a gasp.

Keith sees Lance's lips struggle to move. He feels the drag of breath where Lance is attempting to draw in air to wheeze out a spell. If only he knew how to keep Lance quiet. A spell to take his voice away, or to seal his lips shut.

For a fraction of a second, Keith considers kissing him to keep him from casting, but he's not even completely sure if that would work, and it's too late anyway.

He hesitated, his grip slipped, and now Lance is using his magic to shove Keith away.

Both free, the spar turns more fluid. Lance summons some sort of bolt magic that Keith dodges. It hits the brick of the alleyway wall and leaves a charred mark where it fizzles. Keith manages to dance anyway and get himself enough time to cast the arrow thing Lance taught him earlier.

It catches Lance off-guard, and he doesn't quite get away in time. The arrow hits against his arm before vanishing, and Lance huffs out an annoyed grunt of pain. Keith knows he has protection spells on to keep him from getting wounded, but that doesn't mean the attacks don't hurt.

Keith's arsenal of spells is relatively limited. Lance has been doing this for years, so any advantage Keith has is not in brute force, but in wit. He's learned Lance's strategy, now, watched and memorized how Lance waits for Keith to move in and then uses Keith's own momentum against him.

But Keith still has a few other tricks up his sleeve.

Keith runs at Lance—no spells, just him—and makes as if to tackle him. Lance dodges easily to the side, and it's as he's skidding to a stop next to Lance, making a sharp turn, that Keith casts one of the first spells he'd been taught. Party tricks: a flash of bright light from his fingertips.

Lance recoils, only enough to throw off his balance, and in the next moment, Keith's muttered another spell and has Lance in a headlock.

He struggles against Keith's hold for a moment, but eventually taps Keith's arm.

They break apart, and Keith feels magic flow through his veins.

“You did good,” Lance pants out after a beat. He takes another moment to recover. “Reversing my spell. That's not... We don't do that much, but it's effective. Allura would scold you for it being too Galra, but I felt your magic in it, too. You're getting better.”

Keith stares at him, breathing hard. “Well,” he says finally. “Maybe I'll just have to accept I'll always be a bit Galra. It feels natural.”

Lance shrugs. “Nothing wrong with that, really,” he says. “The Galra aren't... inherently bad. Allura thinks otherwise, but she has bad history. The real difference is just how they perceive magic. As a tool rather than a part of them. It's led to them doing some bad things... But it's not the magic that's corrupted, just the users.”

“So you're saying _I_ was corrupted? Or am?”

“Not necessarily,” Lance continues. “It's... more of a grey area. People don't always fall into nice categories. Sometimes their magic doesn't either. The Galra's magic is stable but tainted by their character. Your magic is sometimes unstable but not because you're necessarily 'bad' or 'good.' It's just you're still figuring out how to align your motive and magic in the same direction. Sometimes that direction is a little bit Galra, but your magic is a little bit Galra. You think like them, just a little. That's not always a bad thing as long as you still believe you're making good decisions.”

Keith blinks, and then groans. “I can't believe I'm learning magic and somehow signed up for complimentary philosophy lessons.”

Lance snorts out laughter. “Complimentary, my ass. That'll be twenty bucks. Hand it over.”

 

Keith breaks into laughter and breaks his concentration in the same heartbeat.

He's supposed to be practicing his shield and weapon manifestation—a spell that summons a physical interpretation of anything you can think of for a few seconds—but Lance keeps distracting him.

“That's not the end of it, either,” Lance is saying, leaning back on his hands where he's sitting on Keith's bed. “We have this ongoing joke that Hunk is from Canada because he had bagged milk at his elementary school.”

Keith tries to steady himself and preform the spell, but gives up in favor of letting out a residual chuckle and asking, “How long has this been going on?”

“I think like seven years,” Lance says casually. “After we started working with Allura, we her got her and Shay in on it too.”

“Oh my God,” Keith wheezes. “Poor guy.”

“It's a rule that whenever we see the Bagged Milk Discourse Tumblr post, we have to send it to him.”

“I'm amazed he's still friends with any of you.”

“If it was anyone but Hunk, I would be surprised. But it is Hunk, and Hunk's amazing. He loves us. Especially me.”

Keith snorts. “Well, at least someone does.”

Lance pulls in a shocked gasp. “How dare!”

But then they both break into giggles again, and Keith snags a pencil from his desk and chucks it at Lance in order to get him to shut up so he can actually practice this damn spell.

“Shoulders back,” Lance reminds him. “Pinky under the ring finger.”

Keith carefully corrects his stance. And just when he's about to—

The doorbell rings.

“Oh, for _fucks_ sake,” Keith groans.

“Pizza?” Lance asks hopefully.

Keith glances over at his laptop. “No. Not out for delivery, yet. Probably salespeople or something.”

“If they mention religion I dare you to say you worship the Greek gods.”

“What if _they_ worship the Greek gods?” Keith asks over his shoulder as he makes his way out of the room.

He hears Lance make a _pfft_ noise as he closes the door to his room.

Keith flexes his shoulders and arms as he makes his way towards the entryway. He's been standing in approximately the same position for the past twenty minutes, and casting has a way of making you work muscles you didn't even know existed. But the soreness is good. Makes him feel like he's getting somewhere. Like he's making progress.

As soon as he opens the front door, Keith is immediately slapped in the face with the most effective word vomit he's ever encountered.

“Keith, oh my God, I'm so so so sorry,” Pidge is spluttering at his doorstep. “I didn't mean to just abandon you. I just got super caught up in all of Hunk's research—though I guess its my research now too—but anyway, I realized I missed turning in like four operating systems labs and then I had to forge a doctor's note for my professor to get him to let me turn anything in, and then I spent the past four days staring at my laptop doing labs.”

Pidge takes in what Keith thinks might be their first breath since he opened the door.

“Anyway, I'm super sorry,” Pidge concludes, like they're writing an essay. “...How are you doing?”

“Fine?” Keith says, still trying to process half the words he just heard. Something something professor is about as far as he got. “Why wouldn't I be fine?”

Pidge raises an eyebrow, and then squints curiously at him. “I would have thought you'd kinda be... a mess about not learning magic. I guess I thought it was more important to you than it is.”

Keith swallows. “N-no... I'm good. Really.”

Pidge's gaze narrows further. “You sure?”

“I'm fine, really,” Keith tries to insist, except that his voice pitches dangerously up. “Who needs magic?”

“You do,” Pidge says. “To find Shiro, I thought.”

“W-well, yeah... I g-guess, but there are other ways—”

Somewhere in the apartment, Keith hears the creak of his door opening—Lance is probably wondering what's taking so long—and he panics. With his hand behind his back, and double hidden behind the door, he quickly mutters and casts a movement spell.

Unfortunately, in his haste, his precision isn't the best. Which is the understatement of the year, because instead of gently closing, Keith hears his door slam shut, hard, and more importantly: loud.

Pidge peers past him. “Is someone there?”

“...No.”

“Keith.”

“It's just... my pet.”

“What?” Pidge chokes out.

“My cat,” Keith corrects, because that's fucking believable.

“You got a cat?” Pidge asks incredulously.

“I got a cat,” Keith echoes.

“...Which you're taking care of between the breaks in your search for Shiro without magic?”

“...Yes.”

“Keith.”

Keith swallows. “Yes?”

“What's your cat's name?”

“Uhhh his... Red. Her name is Red.”

Pidge squints dubiously. “Do you not know what gender your cat is?”

“Well, it would be rude to ask.”

Pidge sighs, on the edge of exasperated. “Keith, what the fuck is going on? Stop lying to me.”

“Keith!” Lance calls, and Keith's spine goes rigid. So much for relaxing those muscles.

Pidge's eyebrows shoot up to their hairline. “Is... is that Lance?”

“...No,” Keith says, and winces. His tone sounds weak, even to his ears.

Pidge narrows their eyes at him, and then realization dawns over their expression, gaze going wide. “Oh my _God_.”

Keith feels his blood run cold. This isn't exactly the reaction he was expecting, and honestly, whatever this is might be worse.

“Well,” Pidge says, attempting to sound the word out in a casual drawl, but instead it comes out rushed. “Don't let me interrupt you two. I'll let you—” Pidge gestures awkwardly at Keith. As in his entire body. “—Get back to it. Uh, glad to know you're doing okay. Let me know when you want to... get back to everything because we've made some progress and I might be able to... ANYWAY, HAVE FUN BYE.”

Pidge turns and speedwalks down the hall.

By the time they get tot he end, it dawns on Keith what they must have assumed. “Oh my God,” he groans, hopefully loud enough for Pidge to hear his distress. “Pidge, NO. IT'S NOT—THAT'S NOT—”

But they're already gone.

“Well,” Lance says, coming up behind where Keith is banging his head repeatedly against the door frame. “That went well.”

Keith pauses in his door frame abuse to glare at Lance incredulously. “No thanks to you. If you just kept your mouth shut—”

“And let you continue with the absolute disaster of a lie you were caught in, and not even managing to pull off?” Lance retorts. “Please. I saved you.”

Keith groans again. “Pidge thinks we're fucking.”

Lance's grin goes sly. “Would that be so bad?”

Keith feels his cheeks heat. He slowly closes the door and makes his way into Lance's space. He threads his fingers behind his back and leans forward. He's close enough that he can feel Lance's breath against his lips, close enough to feel their heartbeats echo against each other.

Keith makes a contemplative noise, draws it out as sensually as he can manage. “Maybe not,” he says, low, and then whispers the spell against Lance's skin.

The shield flares up between them in an instant, shoving hard against Lance's check and sending him sprawling across the floor.

“Oh, fuck you,” Lance gasps out from the ground. “You're playing dirty.”

“What can I say?” Keith taunts. “Playing fair is only for those who are afraid to lose.”

“Yeah?” That what you think?” Lance retorts as he picks himself up. “You willing to risk that?”

Keith grins. “Hasn't been too hard to win, so far.”

Keith makes his way back towards his room.

Or at least, that's what he would be doing, if he could move.

“I think,” Lance says, while he forces Keith's body back against the wall. He releases everything but Keith's hands, which he keeps pinned. “That you owe me for that one.”

“And what?” Keith quips. “Could you possibly want?”

Lance draws close, leans in closer. He runs his finger along the line of Keith's jaw. Keith stares at him, defiant, even as the dark of Lance's gaze—wanting—draws him in.

Lance ghosts his lips over Keith's cheek, follows the trail of his finger along Keith's jaw. Keith lets the tension ease out of his body in a sigh, and Lance's lips brush lighter than a feather against his own.

And then they're gone.

The heat of Lance pressing close, too, is gone, and Keith is left stuck to the wall and gaping at him incredulously. After he takes a moment to recover—during which Lance plasters a shittily smug grin across his face—Keith spits: “Fuck you.”

Lance's grin widens. “Gonna have to work your way up to that one, Sweetheart. Wouldn't want to _lose_ out on a chance with me.”

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith growls. He struggles to move away from the wall. He's not sure if he wants to kill Lance or kiss him. “Let me go.”

“You did well with the manifestation. Good timing. Next lesson is breaking out of incorporeal bonds. There's a code word to free you. You're welcome to either break the bonds or find the word. This one you can't turn on me, either. Have fun.”

Lance saunters off into the apartment, calling over his shoulder. “Pizza's taking a while. Do you have any goldfish crackers?”

Keith stares after him, unsure if he's pissed or impressed. Probably both.

 

In the next heartbeat, three things happen.

One, the calico stray—Lance has nicknamed her Red after Keith's awkward Pidge conversation—jumps onto Lance's leg, digging her little devil-sharp claws into Lance's pants.

Two, Keith lands a brutal hit to Lance's chin.

Three, Lance's phone rings.

The sharp trill of his ringtone has them both jumping away, panting, though Lance's movement is vaguely impaired due to cat.

“Smart,” Lance notes, breathing hard, as he digs for his phone in his pocket. “Using your surroundings.” He attempts to shake Red off him and fails. “It's Allura. Take a break. Bring me my water?”

Keith makes his way across the alley, going for their stuff. They've been sparing for the past hour or so, accompanied on-off by Lance's strays.

Keith chugs about half his water bottle before he grabs Lance's and heads over.

But Lance doesn't take it when Keith offers it.

“Shit—” he's saying, voice pitched up in panic. “I'll be—” he cuts off before he even finishes, shoving his phone back into his pants. He looks like he's about to bolt until he realizes Keith is next to him and freezes.

“What?” Keith asks.

“The Galra are at Altea.”

Keith takes a second to process, and it's in that second that Lance turns around and begins to open a portal.

“ _What_?” Keith echoes. “Is Pidge there?”

“Does it matter?” Lance snarls. “It's the Galra. Everyone is in danger.”

“I'm going with you,” Keith states.

Lance's entire body stutters in its movement, and the portal nearly fizzles. “No, it's dangerous.”

“So you want me to stay here while my best friend is potentially in danger from the same people that kidnapped my brother?” Keith snaps. “No way. Going with you.”

“Allura—”

“Fuck Allura,” Keith growls. “If the Galra are so bad, she'll be grateful for the help. Besides, I'm not doing it for her.”

The portal shimmers into being against the wall. Lance glances over his shoulder at Keith, gaze conflicted.

And then he's grabbing at Keith's wrist and dragging him into the light.

 


End file.
